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FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS OF 

PSYCHOANALYSIS 



BY 



A. A. BRILL, Ph.B., M.D. 

LECTURER ON PSYCHOANALYSIS AND ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY, 
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY. 



m 



NEW YORK 

HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 
1921 









COPYRIGHT, 1 921, BY 
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. 



PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. 



DEC 30 1921 
©CI.A653320 



INTRODUCTION 

There are a number of misconceptions concerning psycho- 
analysis, some of which at least I would like to clear up. 
In 1908, when I first introduced psychoanalysis into this 
country, I addressed myself primarily to the medical pro- 
fession, for psychoanalysis was developed by Prof. Freud 
while he studied the border-line cases of mental disturb- 
ances, and my interest was merely that of a psychiatrist 
who vainly tried to help such patients and finally found in 
psychoanalysis the most valuable instrument for the treat- 
ment and exploration of the mind. But even then it was 
realized that the subjects treated by psychoanalysis went 
far beyond pure medical spheres, for when a human mind 
was entered for the purpose of studying the origin of an 
abnormal manifestation, all his normal mental and emo- 
tional expressions had to be considered. In the course of 
many years Prof. Freud thus solved the mysteries of 
dreams, wit, mythology, fairy tales, and threw much light 
on the history of civilization and on the development of 
religion and philosophy, — subjects and phenomena which, 
strictly speaking, do not belong to abnormal states. It was 
therefore quite natural to expect that persons interested 
in the above mentioned subjects would be attracted also 
to psychoanalysis, and a review of the very extensive 
psychoanalytic literature shows that it not only drew to 
itself the attention of the medical profession br 4 : also 
that of the psychologist, educator, and serious minded lay- 

iii 



iv INTRODUCTION 

man, and notwithstanding some uninformed individuals to 
the contrary, much good has already been accomplished. 
Last but not least it has also attracted many charlatans 
and quacks who find in it a medium for the exploitation 
of the ignorant classes by promising to cure all their ail- 
ments by psychoanalysis. This, as everyone knows, is 
nothing new in medicine; there is no disease which is not 
cured by quacks. One could therefore easily remain silent 
and think that any person who is foolish enough to entrust 
his mind to quacks deserves no consideration, but as I feel 
somewhat responsible for psychoanalysis in this country, I 
merely wish to say that, whereas psychoanalysis is as 
wonderful a discovery in mental science as, let us say, the 
X-ray in surgery, it can be utilized only by persons who 
have been trained in anatomy and pathology. As a thera- 
peutic agent psychoanalysis at best has a very limited 
field, it can only be used in the treatment of special cases. 
It cannot cure cancer, it cannot make an adjustable citizen 
out of a defective "radical," it cannot return an arrant young 
husband to a neurotic elderly lady, it has no more to do 
with the separation of mismated couples than the micro- 
scope with the dissolutions of tissues ; in fine it cannot make 
a normal person out of an idiot, and does not give a 
philosophy of life to a person who has not brains enough 
to formulate one himself. But it has already rewritten all 
the mental sciences, and in the hands of trained psychi- 
atrists it can cure the most chronic psychoneurotic affec- 
tions. Moreover, the knowledge gained through it is de- 
veloping a prophylaxis, which will not only diminish nervous 
and mental diseases but will establish newer methods in 
our system of education. In brief, psychoanalysis aside 
from its therapeutic application, which is not the object 
of this work, is of interest to any person who wishes to 



INTRODUCTION v 

understand human nature and know himself in the Socratic 
sense. 

The material found in this book is taken from the lec- 
tures given at my elementary course at the department of 
pedagogics of the New York University. This course is 
primarily intended for those who are occupying themselves 
with problems of education and psychology. But as it is 
impossible to talk about the normal individual without show- 
ing what would happen to a child if subjected to a peculiar 
or special kind of environment, I have given illustrative 
cases from abnormal spheres as well as brief, in no way 
technical, descriptions of some forms of mental derange- 
ments. I have also tried to avoid technical expressions as 
much as possible, and have not taken the trouble to clutter 
this volume with a lot of references, which a book intended 
for professional people would necessarily demand, but any- 
one knowing of my activities realizes that all my work is 
built on Prof. Freud's foundations, and are referred to his 
works for more detailed and more technical information. 

Mr. Sydney M. Frankel, one of my former students, has 
given me very valuable suggestions, and relieved me of 
the task of indexing this book. I am very much indebted 
to him. 

A. A. Brill 
November, 1921. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER JAGB 

I. The Cathartic Method ...... i 

II. The Symptom : Its Nature and Function . 25 

III. The Psychology of Forgetting .... 47 

IV. Psych opathology of Every-Day Life . . 76 
V. Wit : Its Technique and Tendencies . . 113 

VI. The Dream : Its Function and Motive . . 139 

VII. The Dream : Its Function and Motive 

(continued) 158 

VIII. Types of Dreams 184 

IX. Types of Dreams (continued) 221 

X. Common Forms of Insanity 253 

XL The Only Child 279 

XII. Fairy Tales and Artistic Productions . . 296 

XIII. Selection of Vocations ...... 313 

Index 337 



vii 



FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS 
OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

CHAPTER I 

THE CATHARTIC METHOD 

". . . It is by utterance that we live. . . ." 

Psychoanalysis is a term that was fully developed by 
Professor Sigmund Freud and his pupils, and, etymologically, 
means mental analysis. We hear about all kinds of psycho- 
analysis, but the psychoanalysis that we are going to study is 
a mental analysis of a special kind that works with special 
instruments; it means the analysis of normal and abnormal 
activities by a certain definite method, — through the analysis 
of dreams, psychopathological actions, hallucinations, delu- 
sions, and psychic attacks of all kinds which we find in the 
abnormal spheres. It was originally developed by working 
with the so-called border-line cases of mental diseases ; that is 
to say, Professor Freud treated cases of so-called nervous- 
ness which the average physician puts under such headings as 
neurasthenia, hysteria, obsessions, and phobias. In order that 
we may understand fully how the subject of psychoanalysis 
was evolved, it seems to me desirable to say a few words 
about the early history of mental diseases. 

The first scientific description of insanity dates back to 
460 B. C. ; at that time Hippocrates considered mental 
disturbances as abnormalities due to some abnormal con- 
dition in the brain. Following him there was a long period 



2 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

of intermission, but one may find clinical descriptions by 
such men as Aretseus in 60 A. D., by Galen in 160 A. D., 

and by many others. During the middle ages 
survey the subject was not only neglected, but a great 
Nervous retrogression followed. Insane people were 
Mental treated most cruelly, and like criminals were 

chained and put to death for being obsessed. But 
with the advance of civilization, the insane began to receive 
more and more attention, and in 1792 Professor Philippe 
Pinel of Paris brought about the abolition of chaining./ He 
was the first one to recognize that the insane person was a 
sick person and not a demon or criminal, Jand since his time 
there has been a gradual tendency toward both ameliorating 
the condition of the insane and understanding the nature of 
insanity generally. 

Modern or present-day psychiatry dates back about 
twenty-five years or perhaps even less. But we may say that 
long before then individual efforts had been made to study 
the subject intelligently and scientifically, and we find ac- 
cordingly a great many scientific contributions to catatonia 
and other diseases. But yet most of the text-books then 
current talked about mania and melancholia as if they were 
diseases by themselves. Nowadays we know, of course, that 
melancholia or mania are not diseases; it would be just as 
wrong to call coughing a disease. We all know that coughing 
is only a symptom of a disease; it is not an entity. That 
is to say, one may cough because he has tuberculosis, or 
perhaps an ordinary so-called cold. And so, too, with mania. 
Among the insane there is no form of insanity that may not 
show a period of that so-called mania. It is just a symptom. 
And so, as you see, symptoms were taken for diseases and 
there were a great many misunderstandings. I have seen on 
record at hospitals for the insane where a patient has been 
diagnosed, say in 1880, as a case of mania, two years later 



THE CATHARTIC METHOD 3 

as a case of melancholia, three years later, again as a case of 
mania, and five years later the patient died of softening of 
the brain. This occurred simply because the doctors did not 
know any better, and this is still true of the ordinary prac- 
titioners, particularly of those doctors who have received 
their education under the old regime. 

It was Professor Kraepelin, at that time of Heidelberg, 
who evolved modern mental science. He was a pupil of the 
great psychologist Wundt, and he discovered that the insane 
followed definite characteristics not only in the manifesta- 
tions of their abnormal perceptions but also in the whole 
course of their disease. Kraepelin did for mental diseases 
what Virchow did for pathology. The latter held that we 
must know how the organs look in order to diagnose a 
disease. He examined diseased lungs, for instance, and 
found they showed certain characteristic features. But of 
course it was not until the microscope was used that real 
entities were established, for though a diseased lung may 
appear tubercular to the naked eye, it may not be that at all 
when studied and compared under the microscope. In 
mental diseases, the microscope is psychoanalysis. For 
years no effort was made to find out what the patient said, 
or, if he said anything at all, what it meant. It was suffi- 
cient when he was taken to the hospital, to write in our notes 
that he was dull, stupid, and demented. What all that really 
meant made little difference. When I came to the State 
Hospital, I examined a patient's record of twenty years. 
I would read, — 1882, patient dull, stupid, and demented; 
then a few years later, patient demented, dull, and stupid, 
and so on until they almost exhausted all possible permu- 
tations and combinations. Then "the patient suddenly 
died." 

With Kraepelin's work, however, which was introduced 
here mainly through the efforts of Adolf Meyer, there was 



4 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

a marked improvement. Psychological entries were regu- 
larly made, every history was comprehensively noted, and 
particular attention was paid to the general behavior of the 
patient. We noted, for instance, what the patient said and 
did, whether he showed any hallucinatory and delusional 
trends, such as imagining that he is an emperor of Japan 
and that he was robbed of his throne, or whether he was 
just indifferent to his environments. His intelligence, mem- 
ory and orientation were thoroughly tested, and last but not 
least he received a thorough physical and neurological exam- 
ination. Only after such an examination did one venture 
the diagnosis. However, when one reads a number of 
histories of the same disease entity, say, dementia praecox, 
one will readily observe that there are no two cases exactly 
alike. And Kraepelin and his school never asked why it 
was that patient A had hallucinations of hearing a woman 
calling him endearing names, and why patient B heard a 
little child crying "mother," and why patient C heard a man 
speaking to her. No effort was made to find out why this 
was so, until Professor Freud published his original studies 
of the so-called border-line cases of mental diseases. 

When we began to examine the nature of hallucinations 
and delusions,': we found for example that there is a definite 
reason why such and such a woman sat in a corner of the 
room at the hospital and fondled a doll made of rags and 
newspapers, talking to it as though it were her baby. When 
we investigate this woman's life, we find that she had an only 
child and lost it, and thus became insane. When a woman 
talks to herself, as it were, we find upon examination that 
she misses that person to whom she talks. I have in mind 
at present a woman who continually converses with her 
imaginary bridegroom. Upon investigation it is found that 
on her wedding day, when all the guests and relatives were 
assembled, he took short leave and did not come. Every- 



THE CATHARTIC METHOD 5 

body, of course, went home and bitterly inveighed against 
him ; she alone tried to defend him. She was stupefied and 
could not imagine that he would not come; she begged the 
people to wait, and they continued to wait for hours, but 
the man never appeared. Then suddenly she ran to the door 
and exclaimed that she heard him talking to her, and since 
then she has been at the hospital for the insane. 

Before Freud developed psychoanalysis, it was commonly 
held that if a person is nervous, there must be something 
wrong with his physical make-up, though this could not be 
substantiated by examination. Such patients have always 
formed a very large class of cases, complaining of all sorts 
of aches and pains, peculiar feelings, morbid fears and ob- 
sessive thoughts, for which there was no physical basis. Dr. 
Beard, an American physician, concluded that as nothing 
wrong could be ascertained in the physical examination of 
such cases, there was necessarily something wrong with their 
nerves, and he therefore designated this whole class of cases 
as neurasthenia, which means a weakness of nerves. As a 
matter of fact, these cases really show no more "weakness of 
nerves" than people who have no such complaints to offer. 
But Dr. Beard thought that the nerve fibers must be weak, 
for apparently there was no heart trouble, nor lung trouble, 
nor anything else that was organically wrong, to account for 
the patients' complaints. Various remedies were used in 
neurasthenia but the treatment was purely symptomatic. 
Thus if the patients were excited the medicine quieted them, 
if dull or depressed they were stimulated. But whatever 
was the remedy, they did not recover; they kept on taking 
these drugs and continually returning to the doctor, much 
to the disgust of both physician and patient. I may say that 
fully eighty percent of patients that consult doctors suffer 
from such complaints, as has been shown by the experience 
of numbers of consultants. They represent the largest class 



6 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

of patients that we find in clinics, dispensaries, and private 
practice. Of course, they may be helped somewhat, but 
that only temporarily. Years ago, when I worked in five 
different clinics and dispensaries in New York, I would 
come in touch with patients who had made the acquaintance 
of all of them. I would treat a woman in the Vanderbilt 
Clinic and then meet her in the Bellevue dispensary; she 
looked quite abashed and sorry, and declared apologetically 
that the medicine she received from me in the first clinic no 
longer did her any good. And so these patients kept on 
moving from one hospital to another, and as a matter of 
fact, they still do to this day. 

About 1880 Professor Heinrich Erb of the University of 
Heidelberg discovered the therapeutic value of electricity. 
It soon became the rage ; it was used in the diagnosis as well 
as in the treatment. Every nervous person was sooner or 
later initiated into the mystery of electrical shocks; when 
the ordinary ones proved ineffective, new forms of electrical 
sparks were invented. But at best such treatment only 
served as a form of suggestion. In a few weeks the patient 
would come back with some new ailment. Electricity may 
do some temporary good, but it never cures. A little 
electricity, a dose of medicine, or a cold bath or massage may 
help a little, but I do not hesitate to say that I have never 
seen a chronic case that was cured by such means. Like the 
other practitioners of his time, Professor Freud resorted to 
all the remedies at his disposal but the results were very dis- 
couraging. 

It was at this time that Freud read about Professor Charcot 
of Paris, who was experimenting with hypnotism. Charcot 
found that he could hypnotize a hysterical person and sug- 
gest to her the symptom of another person and the patient 
would have this symptom. In other words, he maintained 
that hysterical symptoms can be suggested through hypno- 



THE CATHARTIC METHOD 7 

tism, and if they can be suggested, they can also be re- 
moved by hypnotism. Let me say, in passing, that hypno- 
tism is nothing quite as strange and mysterious as you gen- 
erally imagine. Do not think that a person can be hypno- 
tized volcns nolens in the manner shown on the vaudeville 
stage. No one can be hypnotized against his will. But 
there is no doubt that if people are willing, they can usually 
be hypnotized. Charcot's experiments soon became widely 
known in the scientific world. As soon as Freud heard 
about these new studies, he left his practice, went to Paris, 
and became one of Charcot's favorite pupils. He worked 
with him for about two years. 

When Freud came back to Vienna, he at once decided to 
utilize his knowledge on cases of neurasthenia. He had a 
friend older than himself, Dr. Breuer, a man of TIie 
great learning, and recognized in Europe for his "£2°*' 
attainments in medical and scientific subjects, who cure" 
took considerable interest in his career. Naturally he was 
very eager to know all about Charcot's work and after 
Freud explained to him what the noted neurologist was 
doing in hysteria, Breuer began to describe what he con- 
sidered an unusually interesting case. He told his younger 
friend about a woman whom he thought to be intelligent 
and refined and who was suffering from a severe case of 
hysteria. She had been treated by some of the most prom- 
inent neurologists in Europe and finally came back to 
Breuer, her family physician. One day she said to him: 
"Dr. Breuer, if you would only let me talk to you and if I 
could tell you how my difficulties started, I think we could 
do something." Dr. Breuer was sympathetic and told her 
to go right ahead. She began to tell him of a paralysis she 
had, and presently she went into an intimate account of her 
life; she talked on and on with much feeling, and when he 
reminded her, in a f rank and friendly way, that he could give 



8 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

her no more time, she asked him for an appointment to come 
again. Every time she came and talked for an hour she felt 
appreciably better ; she called it the "talking cure." She in- 
sisted upon calling on him just to talk. She would tell him 
when a certain symptom came, how she suffered, about her 
intimate affairs, and about such and such a dream. She 
spoke about things that a doctor would not generally think 
of listening to. It meant quite a tax on his time, but he 
was anxious to help her. He became attached to her and 
sympathized with her emotional difficulties; and gradually 
she was losing one symptom after another. It seemed 
strange to Breuer; he had given this woman all sorts of 
medicines, another doctor had given her hot and cold baths, 
and another electricity; and now she came merely to tell 
him stories and was getting well. 

To Freud this story was full of significance ; it opened up 
problems to him that he had been pondering for years. He 
asked himself why this woman should be getting well by 
merely talking. As he went deeper and deeper into the 
problem, he became more and more convinced of one funda- 
mental principle. He began to see more and more clearly 
that the whole idea was, that if the patient could go back 
to the origin of the symptom, then the symptom would dis- 
appear. The great difficulty, however, was that it took so 
much time. When a person comes to you and tells you 
about his or her life and you have to be a sympathetic listen- 
er and live through that life, as it were, you cannot go 
through with it in the twinkling of an eye; life is long, and 
it takes time to track its undercurrents, and a person's 
thoughts do not run in seconds ; it is not a matter of feeling 
a pulse. Freud suggested that hypnotism be used in con- 
junction with this "talking cure," for hypnotism is supposed 
to broaden consciousness; it opens up the whole mind; no 
resistances or inhibitions are offered; things come into the 



THE CATHARTIC METHOD 9 

mind and take root. A patient in the waking state will not 
be able to answer questions, unless you give him a long time 
to think and recall. Freud thought accordingly that it would 
be a splendid idea to hypnotize her and ask her how and 
when she got her symptom; this would save so much time. 
And so he and Breuer took the patient's history first, then 
hypnotized her and asked her about her painful condition. 
The patient would recall and tell everything, and gradually 
the symptom disappeared. 

Freud and Breuer worked together for some time and got 
wonderful results; they were so impressed with this new 
procedure that they called it the "Cathartic Method," which 
means the purging of the mind, a^ort of unburdening of the 
mind. In every-day life, we all know the therapeutic value 
of expression; when a person tells you his troubles he be- 
gins to feel better ; we say a weight has been removed from 
his heart. They took cases that had been resisting treatment 
for years and cured them. They finally reported some of 
them and formulated various theories. In the first place, 
they found that all hysterics suffer from the past. Every 
hysterical symptom represents some mental or emotional 
disturbance that has taken place in the person's life in the 
past; there were occurrences of a disagreeable and painful 
nature which every individual likes to forget. The idea was 
that if a patient can recall an unpleasant situation and live it 
over, so to say, he loses the symptom ; that words are almost 
equivalent to the action, and that in going over some painful 
experience in the past, there is what is called an dbreaction, 
German, "Abreagierung" in which the painful emotions as- 
sociated with the experience are liberated and thus cease to 
create physical disturbances. When the patient had a pain 
in the face it was treated as neuralgia; of course, it may 
have been that or not. If it is neuralgia it will usually yield 
to treatment, if not it is a psychic pain, a functional pain. It 



io PSYCHOANALYSIS 

represents, in concrete form, the expression: "I felt as 
though she slapped me in the face." When the painful 
situation is brought back to the patient and explained to 
him, the symptom disappears. 

Let me make all this a little clearer by an example. A 
woman has a pain in her arm ; she consults the doctor, who 
examines her and asks her whether she was out yesterday. 

She says she was, and that the weather was bad and she 
caught cold. He prescribes a medicine, but the pain con- 
tinues. She returns to the doctor, he tries some other 
remedy, but the pain grows worse. The patient is dis- 
couraged and consults another physician; she now merely 
tells him she has rheumatism in her arm ; she gives him the 
symptoms ; he takes it for granted that she has rheumatism 
and treats her accordingly. She goes from doctor to doctor 
until some diagnostician pronounces it hysterical and not 
rheumatism. She consults a neurologist and we find this 
story : She is a young woman who had made the acquaintance 
of a college student. As time went on, they became more and 
more intimate and it was rumored that they were to be mar- 
ried; in fact she thought so too. Upon graduating, he left 
the city and kept up a long correspondence with her. He 
came and spent his vacations with her; but he did not pro- 
pose. The general impression was that, as he was a young 
man, he wished to make his way in the world before he mar- 
ried. Thus for years he came, spent his vacations with 
her, and left without proposing. The last year he wrote her 
with manifest enthusiasm that at last he had reached the goal 
of his ambition: he had received an appointment with such 
and such a salary. All the relatives heard about the letter 
and were now quite sure he would marry her. He came for 
his vacation, as usual, spent some time with her and took her 
out for a long walk the night before he left. But he did 
not propose. Everybody was disappointed ; the mother was 



THE CATHARTIC METHOD n 

disgusted; her brother threatened to punch him in the face 
when he came again ; and the poor girl was terribly grieved. 
She was told to drop him and think no more of him ; she was 
willing to do so but claimed that it was much easier said than 
done. She argued that he must love her or else he would 
not write and spend his vacations with her ; she felt that she 
was his only confidante. She did not realize that there are 
men who are so inhibited in their love life that they cannot 
propose. She was experiencing a mental conflict. She 
wanted to drop him; but there was no mistake about his 
loving her. He was a serious, quiet, well-behaved man who 
came from a very fine family and whom no one could accuse 
of being a trifler. "He certainly is not an adventurer, be- 
cause he does not act like one," she would think to herself ; 
"but why, then, does he not propose?" [I would like you to 
notice the human, emotional element that enters into all 
these cases.; Gradually, however, she made up her mind 
that he did not love her and that she would have nothing 
more to do with him. In time she was even ready to write 
to him not to correspond with her, but she could not gather 
sufficient strength to do so. Gradually there came on that 
pain in her arm. 

When we go beyond the superficial aspects of this case, 
we find that it goes back to a fundamental condition in the 
past. We discover that the patient is suffering from the 
past, that the pain in her arm is only a monument of the 
past ; it is a memento, one might say, of her mental conflict. 
In other words, when she was emotionally arguing with her- 
self whether he loved her or not and when she had to re- 
press all talk about him, and make herself believe that she 
did not love him, her feelings, her emotions became converted 
into that of pain. The arm was the arm that he pressed on 
the night before he left. She would say to herself : "But what 
about that feeling ? He pressed my arm" ; for then she had 



12 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

hoped that he would say the expected words. Analysis reveals 
that it is that feeling that she wished to retain in memory that 
became a pain ; it was a symbolic form of expression, for 
she could not talk about it in any other way. Without hav- 
ing to speak about the young man she could now uncon- 
sciously retain this episode through the pain in the arm. 
There was in a sense, a morbid gain. She could now talk 
and complain about her pain and thus have some form of 
expression, though the fundamental and deeper phase of 
her condition was submerged and she knew nothing about 
it. We see here a conversion of past emotion into some- 
thing physical. 1 When the patient realized this deeper as- 
pect of her condition and when the painful past experience 
was brought to her consciousness she was cured. It was 
after careful study and observation of such cases that the 
idea was postulated, then, first, that one can convert psychic 
energy into physical manifestations, and secondly that a cure 
is effected by bringing the submerged painful experience to 
consciousness, thus releasing the strangulated emotions. 
This new viewpoint meant an enormous step forward. 

We may see from the above case that what Breuer and 
Freud brought to the surface by the Cathartic Method were 
those things that the patient found disagreeable 
con- and painful, things that the patient could not talk 

pore- ' about. This young woman could not complain of 

scious the fact that the young man did not propose to 

uncon- her for so many years; and of course, if it is 

essentially a sexual situation, no sensitive person 
can speak about it openly, particularly a woman. In 

1 This conversion of mental into physical elements takes place in 
a certain definite way. This particular patient had the reminiscence 
of the arm, so it was in the arm; sometimes it is in the nose, hair 
or any other organ or bodily function. It is hard to realize how 
many different complaints one hears from patients of this type. 



THE CATHARTIC METHOD 13 

other words, they formulated the theory that the patient 
suffers from what we call strangulated emotions, certain 
feelings and ideas which we would like to give vent to, but 
cannot. We say they are finally pushed into the uncon- 
scious, and we postulate such a thing as unconscious, that is, 
something of which the person is absolutely unaware and 
which he cannot, through any effort of his own, bring to 
consciousness. In the Zurich school, which I shall have oc- 
casion to speak about later, we thought of the emotions thus 
associated with a painful experience as forming a complex. 
We defined it as an idea or group of ideas accentuated and 
colored over by profound emotional feelings which was 
gradually relegated to the unconscious for the very reason 
that it was of a distinctly painful nature and so could not 
be kept in consciousness. We unconsciously run away from 
distressing thoughts : we say we wish to forget them. These 
strangulated ideas and emotions remain in the unconscious in 
a dormant state, and any association may bring them to the 
surf ace v 

A woman, for instance, gets up one morning, feeling per- 
fectly well ; she sits down to her desk to write a note to her 
friend. She writes the date and stops ; a feeling of sadness 
gradually grows upon her, and she decides not to write. All 
day she feels depressed ; it so happens that she comes to see 
me and tells me about it. Upon talking to her, I find 
that the moment she took her pen and wrote the date the 
latter struck a complex in her mind which evoked a certain 
date that went back a great many years to a day when some- 
thing extremely disagreeable happened to her. When she 
became depressed, she knew nothing about it. She did not 
consciously recall the original painful experience. She 
merely experienced the emotion that went with the episode. 
In this pushing out of what is painful from the field of 
consciousness, we have an unconscious protective mechanism. 



H PSYCHOANALYSIS 

We have to forget, so to say, a painful experience; if every- 
thing disquieting and troublesome were to remain in con- 
sciousness, life would be unbearable. But a word, an odor, 
a sound, a color, may plunge you right back into that state 
of mind of, let us say, ten years ago ; you have completely 
forgotten the whole situation, but the emotion, like an old 
unwelcome visitor, comes up and depresses you. Some- 
times the recurring emotions are pleasant ones, but usually 
they are unpleasant. 

In studying such cases we find that the painful episodes 
are kept in the unconscious, because they could not be worked 
off at the time of their occurrence. An individual ex- 
periences a profound emotional shock and cannot give it ex- 
pression; it remains in a repressed condition; and the only 
way to liberate the pathological energy it has accumulated 
is by bringing it to the plane of conscious expression. When 
the patient talks about it, he is living it over in a very vital 
sense. I have had a patient take a little statuette which was 
on my desk and throw it on the floor and break it, simply 
because he was intensely wrought up over a certain experi- 
ence he recalled. I had a lady to-day in my office who was 
greatly surprised at first and laughed, when I explained to 
her the reason why she could not walk. Presently she 
cried out: "Doctor, my legs are tingling." I told her she 
could walk home, and she did. There was an abreaction; 
we reached the crux of the emotional experience ; the whole 
situation was brought to her consciousness. 

I would like you to notice that I am using the term "un- 
conscious" and not "subconscious" which is used rather 
loosely by many people to denote so many different things. 
As we have already said, the unconscious, according to 
Freud, includes all those psychic manifestations of which the 
person is not aware. It is made up of repressed material, 
that is, of the sum total of those psychic processes which 



THE CATHARTIC METHOD 15 

have been crowded out of consciousness from the very be- 
ginning of childhood; they are the primitive impulses that 
have been inhibited and sublimated in the development of 
the child. The child is originally a primitive being ; it is like 
a little animal, and as it gradually gives up the gross animal 
instincts, it represses them ; we say they are pushed into the 
unconscious. We try to make a child do what it would not 
do, if left by itself. There are primitive impulses in every 
child which have to be curbed from the very beginning and 
which form points of crystallization for future repressions. 
An occurrence in one's life, at the age of fifty, for instance, 
may be traced back to some childhood repression; there is 
always some subtle and intimate connection in our present 
emotional experience with something that occurred in the 
past. Absorbed in the immediate synthetic significance of a 
present experience we cannot stop to realize the important 
part the past has had in molding it; in a very real sense it 
may be said that we are always elaborating upor old psychic 
material. But what is more, these past element lie in the un- 
conscious and are prevented from coming to the surface by 
the protective mechanism to which I have already drawn 
your attention. 

Then, too, there are the repressions which take place in 
adult life; and because the late experiences of which they 
consist have not been subjected to the same amount of re- 
pression as the earlier and more primitive ones, we say they 
remain in what is designated as the foreconscious. We 
have, then, an unconscious, a foreconscious, and a conscious 
plane, as it were. As we go along, I shall try to show you 
how different psychic manifestations, such as neurotic 
symptoms, or dreams, fall into one or another of these cate- 
gories. We shall see that the psychoneurotic symptom is 
the function of two separate systems, or psychic streams, 
both striving for expression. One subjects the activity of 



16 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

the other to a critique, which results in an exclusion from 
consciousness. Now the criticizing system, or the fore- 
conscious, is in closer relation to the one criticized, or the 
unconscious ; it stands like a screen between the unconscious 
and consciousness. Both the unconscious and the fore- 
conscious are unknown in the psychical sense, but the uncon- 
scious is incapable of consciousness without external aid, 
while the foreconscious can reach consciousness after it ful- 
fills certain conditions which we shall take up later on. We 
maintain that eight-ninths of all our actions are guided by 
our unconscious and that consciousness as such is nothing but 
an organ of perception. 

For some time Freud and Breuer continued to treat cases 
of hysteria and neurasthenia quite successfully; but they 
wgke were soon confronted by a serious difficulty ; they 

25SS" found that a great many people who were sick 

EUAo- a anc * nee ded help could not be hypnotized. They 
rated were especially interested in a certain very in- 

telligent woman whom they made every effort to hypnotize, 
but without success. Finally Freud took her to Bernheim 
in France, who was reputed to be able to hypnotize almost 
all of his patients, but he, too, could do nothing with her. 
What was to be done? Freud then thought of an experi- 
ment that he saw in Bernheim's clinic. In hypnotism, if you 
give the person what is called a post-hypnotic suggestion, 
that is, tell him that at three o'clock, Friday, January 25th, 
he is to come to a certain place, and take, let us say, an 
umbrella there, precisely at that time he will experience a 
feeling of inner compulsion, and if no physical conditions 
intervene, he will try to carry out the suggestion. When 
the person is in the hypnotic state and receives such a sug- 
gestion, he is absolutely unconscious of it later; it is followed 
by what we term post-hypnotic amnesia; he forgets com- 



THE CATHARTIC METHOD 17 

pletely the entire experience. I once performed this same 
experiment with a nurse; a doctor was present to see how 
it worked out. Exactly at the stated time she came; she 
was under the impression that the doctor was one of my 
patients, and though she knew very definitely that no one 
was allowed to come into the office while I was being con- 
sulted, she nevertheless made an effort to enter. The doctor 
met her at the door and upon asking her what she wished, she 
replied: "I must go in and get an umbrella; it is raining." 
When he drew her attention to the fact that it was not rain- 
ing she felt quite embarrassed. Thus without thinking, she 
carried out the idea she had received in the hypnotic state. 
In the same way, also, an alcoholic, for instance, will ex- 
perience a feeling of nausea and will actually vomit when- 
ever he tries to drink alcoholic beverages after he has re- 
ceived a hypnotic suggestion to that effect. Of course, the 
matter is not quite as simple as it may sound. 

After such a post-hypnotic suggestion Bernheim would 
ask the patient to try and recall what happened while he was 
unconscious. The latter would say that he remembered 
nothing ; he was urged on, however, to concentrate and think 
until at first some vague reminiscence came to consciousness, 
and finally the very suggestion that was given during the 
hypnosis. Now Freud saw no reason why the same thing 
could not be done with his patient who could not be 
hypnotized; if it was possible to recall a post-hypnotic sug- 
gestion, why should it be impossible to recall the episode as- 
sociated with her symptom? He set about questioning the 
woman; at first she could recall nothing; he would insist 
upon her telling him what came to her mind, as she was con- 
centrating her attention upon the symptom. She talked about 
many things that had no apparent connection with the par- 
ticular situation; she went on and on and he noted very 
carefully everything she said. In this way, he finally reached 



18 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

the origin of the symptom. He then found not only that 
hypnotism was not necessary but that it was much better to 
treat a patient without it, for people, as a rule, have an 
almost instinctive dread of hypnosis. That is how he de- 
veloped what he called the "continuous association method" ; 
it was the most significant contribution to the psychoanalytic 
procedure. 

I would like to draw your attention, in this connection, to 
a fundamental difference Freud pointed out between hypno- 
tism and the psychoanalytic method. The former works, as 
in painting, by putting on impressions, per via di porre, as 
Leonardo da Vinci has so aptly expressed it; the latter 
method by removing all extraneous material, per via di 
levare. As the sculptor chisels a piece of marble into the 
ideal shape, so also in psychoanalysis, we endeavor to bring 
the individual into complete harmony and unity of char- 
acter, by taking away all undesirable excrescences in the 
forms of needless inhibitions imposed upon him by his en- 
vironment. In hypnotism we disregard the individual's 
mental make-up ; he is in an unconscious state and we simply 
impose upon him some suggestion, in a bold, authoritative 
fashion. In psychoanalysis we learn to know the patient; 
we delve into the deeper mainsprings of his character; we 
gain his confidence ; and when we have learnt his personality 
and come into vital and intimate relations with it, we then re- 
move, as the sculptor, all extraneous matter. We impose 
nothing; we merely eliminate and dispense with whatever is 
superfluous, obstructive, and cumbrous. 

Following this analogy I may add that there is also a 
similarity in the relations that sculpture and psychoanalysis 
respectively bear to the material with which each works. 
Just as in the former the ultimate result of the artist's efforts, 
his consummate achievement, will depend in large measure 
upon the nature of the material that he uses, so in the latter, 



THE CATHARTIC METHOD 19 

the physician's ultimate success in the treatment will be de- 
pendent to no small degree, on the character of the patient. 
We are told that in creative work there is always a fine 
blending of form and idea, of substance and execution. We 
look upon Michelangelo's Moses in a spirit of profound awe ; 
how sublime and terrible does this old prophet appear! 
But have you ever paused to consider for a moment how 
ludicrous this powerful statue would be if instead of that 
fine, white, clear marble, the sculptor had used, let us say, 
some stone with black streaks running through it? And 
likewise in psychoanalysis the physician can attain the best 
results with the best type of individual only ; by that I mean, 
a patient of the higher type mentally, morally, and in every 
other respect. Psychoanalytic therapy can accomplish 
nothing with the defective ; the individual must be at least of 
the average type to derive any marked benefits from the 
treatment. 

When we attempt to discover the origin of the symptom 
through the free and continuous associations of the patient, 
such as we have noted above, we find the way beset with 
many difficulties. Many things have to be found out before 
you can judge from the productions obtained from the 
patient; you get a mass of material and you may soon lose 
your way in it ; your have to know what it essentially means. 
If you examine the actual productions that a person gives 
you when you ask him to tell you what comes to his mind, 
you will find a very peculiar state of affairs ; you will then 
realize that there is no such thing in the world as a clear 
thinker. A patient has a jumble of thoughts running 
through his mind and he feels that he would appear ridicu- 
lous and stupid if he were to describe it ; he is naturally em- 
barrassed and finds refuge in silence. Moreover, there are 
certain perversities of nature that come to his mind, — 
very delicate subjects indeed, that no one likes to talk about. 



20 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

Thus an enormous number of things emerge which he thinks 
are quite irrelevant, family skeletons, and little buried secrets 
that the doctor need not know. What is more, the very- 
thing you are seeking is kept down and held in the uncon- 
scious by chains, as it were, because it is disagreeable and 
painful. As we have said, there is a protective mechanism 
on the part of the mind to prevent it from coming to the 
surface; you must not know it, because if you do, it will 
cause you pain. Another great difficulty is that the same 
words have very often different meanings to different people ; 
no two individuals talk exactly the same language; every- 
body has his own way of expressing ideas; everybody has 
his own mode of reaction to this world. There are some 
expressions in every family that the uninitiated cannot under- 
stand ; there is a sort of Freemasonry in every home. But 
the greatest difficulty is that the language that we find in the 
unconscious is different from that of our every-day life; 
what I mean is, that in the unconscious conceptions are ex- 
pressed in a different way than in conscious life, as I shall 
show you more fully when we discuss the subject of dreams. 
Now all this had to be fathomed, analyzed, elaborated, 
weighed, and understood, before we could get at the heart of 
the situation. 

In thus probing the unconscious, Freud became impressed 
with certain fundamental facts. For one thing, he began to 
see more and more clearly that impressions are imperishable, 
especially those we receive in early life. When we probe 
the mind we always find that the individual receives the most 
vital impressions that stand out for life and direct him, in 
the beginning of his existence. The child's mind when born 
is, in the words of Locke, a tabula rasa, a blank slate; the 
child is endowed with certain elementary mechanisms that 
will help it to sustain life; gradually those impressions are 
formed that are so vitally necessary for the proper adjust- 



THE CATHARTIC METHOD 21 

ment. Whether the individual will be the so-called normal 
or abnormal person, whether he will be able to adjust him- 
self to his environment or fall by the wayside, depends en- 
tirely upon the nature of these early impressions. Given an 
average amount of brains, every individual as he grows up 
has certain tracks laid out for him by his environment; he 
can follow those tracks and those only ; if he attempts to get 
off the track, he finds himself in trouble; he finds himself 
incompatible with his environment, he collides with his 
environment. It is thus of great importance to give 
the individual enough tracks to be able to move freely 
and at the same time not to come into conflict with his 
fellow beings. From a very broad experience with nervous 
and mental diseases, I feel that if everybody would un- 
derstand this, all mothers and teachers particularly, we 
could reduce nervous and mental diseases as much as we 
have reduced diseases of small-pox and typhoid. We are 
not afflicted with these time-old diseases to-day because we 
know what produces them and have learnt to prevent them. 
We can do likewise with a knowledge of the psychoanalytic 
principles. Indeed the great service that psychoanalysis can 
render to-day consists chiefly of prophylaxis ; as far as curing 
patients is concerned, I feel rather pessimistic at present. 
We can cure few in comparison with the overwhelming 
numbers : the treatment can be carried out only by physicians 
of experience with nervous and mental work; then, too, it 
requires so much time that very many people cannot afford it. 
I feel that it will take probably from twenty to thirty years 
before we shall have enough institutions to afford needy 
patients the benefits of psychoanalytic therapy. 

There was also another fundamental thing that very 
forcibly impressed Freud, as he continued treating and study- 
ing his patients. He found that when they began to dwell 
on their intimate personal experiences, they practically all 



22 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

would invariably bring up matters appertaining to sex. He 
was so impressed with this fact that he asserted that in the 
normal sex life no neurosis is possible. Even before him, 
neurologists of the old school have always known that sex 
played a part in nervous conditions, but to them it was just 
gross sex, it meant just the physical elements of sex. Freud 
formulated a new concept of sex. To him the sexual life 
of the individual meant his love-life. He used the term in 
the broadest sense, as embracing not merely the gross sexual, 
or the physical elements, but all that we commonly associate 
with love. He found that the conceptions of sex in vogue at 
his time were practically all false. It was generally held that 
there was no manifestation of sex until the boy or girl reached 
the age of puberty, when, suddenly, and in some mysterious 
way, the sexual impulses appeared. Freud found, however, 
that there were sexual experiences, or feelings very much 
allied to sex, at the age of six or seven, or even earlier. What 
many people consider as something other than sex is really 
an integral phase of it. Love and sex are the essential com- 
ponents of the love-life and they go hand in hand. Let me 
assure you that I have seen a number of cases where all so- 
called love existed, but there could not be normal sex rela- 
tions, and there was a separation or a divorce. Consider, 
for instance, the case of a woman who marries a man after 
being in love with him for about six years ; upon marriage, 
it is found that he cannot consummate his marital agreement ; 
we find very soon a separation often followed by a divorce. 

We maintain that sex is born with the individual just as 
he is born with every other organ, every other function. The 
child is born without teeth, but upon examination, you will 
find that the pulps are there from which the teeth will later 
come. The child has all the partial impulses of sex, of love, 
and of the mechanisms that later go to make up the special- 
ized function. You can actually see a child of a few weeks 



THE CATHARTIC METHOD 23 

react to the feeling of like and dislike; observe an infant of 
say a few weeks, smile at it and it will respond, frown at it 
and it will make faces. What does a child of that age know, 
you ask. It has these partial impulses at birth and it reacts 
accordingly. This attitude toward sex has been subjected 
to a great deal of criticism and Freud has been accused of 
laying an undue amount of stress on sex; many have been 
and still are opposed to his theories on that very account. 
They declare that there are a great many cases that show 
nothing irregular in their sexual life and yet are nervous. 
Without going into details at present, I wish to say that my 
own experience very definitely corroborates Freud's position. 
Continuing to delve deeper and deeper into the recesses of 
the mind, Freud also began to see more and more clearly the 
intimate relation existing between the dream and the patient's 
innermost thoughts and feelings. In dwelling on some sig- 
nificant emotional experience, the patient would very often 
say: "Just at that time, I had a peculiar dream. I was 
walking and a man came up to me and attacked me; I was 
terribly frightened; I tried to run but could not; I was just 
rooted to the spot." At first Freud paid no more attention to 
these dreams than any other intelligent man of his time. 
But gradually, as he listened to them, he began to see that 
they must have some place in the vital economy of the mind, 
for everything in the physical or mental spheres must have 
a function. In time he was convinced that the dream is not 
a mere jumble, a senseless mechanism, but that it represents 
frequently in symbolic form the person's inmost thoughts 
and desires, that it represents a hidden wish. He thus de- 
veloped his monumental work, the greatest in the century, in 
my opinion, "The Interpretation of Dreams." He found that 
the dream offered the best access, that it was the via regia, 
as he put it, to the unconscious ; that it was of tremendous 
help not only in the treatment, but also in the diagnosis. 



24 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

And finally, as Freud continued to observe and study his 
cases more and more deeply, as his horizon widened and 
widened all the time, he began to see more and more that 
everything in the psychic life has meaning, everything has a 
cause, nothing that the individual may do or say is meaning- 
less. Every slip of the tongue, or mistake in writing, or some 
unconscious gesture or movement has significance. I asked 
a friend the other day over the 'phone where he had been 
since his marriage ; and he replied that he went on a "money- 
hoon." He meant to say "honeymoon," but when a man 
marries, money begins to play a rather significant part. If 
we pay attention to what is being said and done about us, 
we shall find a tremendous amount of material that is un- 
usually interesting. We will learn later on why we make 
these mistakes. Freud's fascinating book on "The Psycho- 
pathology of Everyday Life" deals with this subject and I 
would advise those who are anxious to read his work to 
begin with this one, for it is the simplest of all his writings. 
In probing the unconscious, Freud thus discovered material 
that is of the utmost importance not only in the treatment of 
patients but also in the development of normal people, in edu- 
cation, folklore, religion, art and literature, and every other 
field of human interest. We may say that he has practically 
rewritten all of mental science and created new concepts in 
every sphere of mental activity. With his work as a starting 
point, new fields of thought and investigation have opened all 
the time, and there gradually has grown up an enormous 
literature on psychoanalysis, swelling all the time in the 
variety and range of the subject matter, all growing out of 
the effort to help humanity, to treat those unfortunate people 
for whom nothing could be done in the past, — the so-called 
"nervous" people. 



CHAPTER II 
THE SYMPTOM: ITS NATURE AND FUNCTION 

In our previous discussion we noted that a neurotic symp- 
tom, such as, for instance, the pain in that young woman's 
arm, is really a monument of the past; that Treu&'B 
through the symptom the neurotic is able to Concept 
dwell on the painful episode in the past, to com- seas 
plain, and weep over it very much like one who would 
shed tears to-day over the battle of Lexington, or over 
the Spanish inquisition. I said that the patient had to 
repress certain ideas and emotions because they were in- 
tolerable and distressing; he had to forget a disagreeable 
situation to which he could not adequately react. We say 
that the ideas and emotions were strangulated; that they 
were pushed into the unconscious. It is different, of course, 
with the average normal person: if he is insulted and feels 
hurt, let us say, he will either try to retaliate, or if he cannot 
do that out of weakness, or cowardice, he will very soon 
manage to "get over," as we say, the whole affair, to shake 
himself free from it. Some people, however, by virtue of the 
fact that they are made of finer, more sensitive substance, 
of perhaps better clay, cannot forget it and they will dwell on 
it continually. They were commonly designated as nervous 
persons, or neurotics; they were generally considered as 
being defective in one way or another, as mental degenerates. 
From what I have already pointed out you may readily see 
that this conception is entirely erroneous; that, on the con- 

25 



26 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

trary, far from being mental degenerates, they are as a class 
high types of individuals. 

This does not mean, however, that those who are mentally 
deficient do not have hysterical mechanisms. The crucial 
point is that they do not manifest a definite neurosis as we 
understand and describe it. When a young lady who has 
been well-bred, experiences a sexual feeling, she will often 
revolt against it; and particularly if she has not been en- 
lightened in matters of sex, she will make an earnest effort to 
crowd it out of consciousness, because she regards the ex- 
perience of and by itself as something distinctly ugly, wrong, 
immoral. On the other hand, defectives who are never 
able to assume those inhibitions that society has imposed 
upon the average individual are thus able, by virtue of their 
deficiency, to commit all sorts of immoral acts. Only a 
woman who is a defective can be a prostitute in every real 
sense of the word ; a normal woman might perhaps think of 
being one, but only a moral idiot or an imbecile can be one. 
The normal woman is so constituted that prostitution is alto- 
gether out of the question ; she may perhaps have some sort 
of an amour with a man, but she will not resort to prostitu- 
tion in the narrow sense of the word. Nor does a normal 
man become a habitual criminal. He may swear off the 
taxes, or take an occasional false oath, but he is not going to 
make a practice of committing crimes. The inhibitions that 
are imposed upon us by society are so strong and exacting 
that we revert of ourselves to the time-old conclusion that 
"honesty is the best policy" : it is the most sensible, the most 
practical, the most pragmatic policy ; it allows us a measure 
of freedom that we otherwise could not enjoy. Neverthe- 
less, there is no doubt that civilization with its manifold in- 
hibitions, impositions, and prohibitions makes it indeed very 
difficult for us to live. There is not a human being who does 
not feel the burden of civilization lie heavy on his shoulders ; 



SYMPTOM : ITS NATURE AND FUNCTION 27 

and though we all bear the cross as patiently as we know 
how, who of us in his heart of hearts does not find himself 
sometimes discontented and complaining? That is the price 
we have to pay for civilization. Sometimes the injustice 
heaped upon a predisposed individual is so great and over- 
whelming, that, as his deeper sense of morality stays his 
rash hand from some criminal act, he becomes neurotic ; and 
sometimes he goes even further, he becomes psychotic. That 
is the way he tries to purge his bosom of all "perilous stuff." 

I am using the terms "neurotic" and "psychotic" and I wish 
that you note the difference between them. A neurosis is a 
nervous disease or a nervous disturbance such as we have 
seen in the case of the young woman who had that pain in 
the arm, for instance. It has nothing to do with insanity. 
The neurotic or psychoneurotic is perfectly sane. What is 
more, he is usually above the average person in mental de- 
velopment. A psychosis is a mental disorder ; the psychotic 
patient suffers from some form of insanity. He need not 
necessarily, of course, have anything in common with the 
mental defective. While I am on this point, I would also 
have you distinguish functional from organic insanity. The 
latter is due to some physical disturbance like certain poisons, 
injuries to the brain, or abnormal growths. The functional 
cases are those whose brains are apparently normal; that is 
to say, if you examine the brain of a paranoiac and that of a 
brilliant man, you will find no essential difference between 
them ; the former shows no pathological condition. 

In mental diseases there are two important entities that 
were discovered by Kraepelin, and as I shall have occasion 
to refer to them from time to time, in this course of lectures, 
it may be well to say a few words about them in this con- 
nection. On some future occasion I hope to enter into them 
in more detail. Kraepelin found that those young patients 
whom he found in the hospital and who were diagnosed as 



28 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

sometimes suffering from mania, and sometimes from melan- 
cholia, or other conditions, showed a definite form of in- 
sanity which he called dementia praecox. It is a chronic, 
progressive form of insanity, which once developed, can 
never be cured, and only on rare occasions do sufferers of it 
sufficiently improve to be sent home, in which case, they 
cannot completely adjust themselves, and what is even more 
distressing, they usually require constant care and atten- 
tion. Probably seventy-five per cent of patients of this type 
are between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five; when they 
become insane, they may show symptoms of mania or melan- 
cholia or both, but the principal feature is the emotional 
deterioration. That is to say, what we first notice is that 
they grow careless and indifferent about their personal ap- 
pearance, their surroundings and the people about them. 
A very intelligent college student, for instance, loses in- 
terest in his work and does not care a farthing whether he 
passes his examinations or not. Listless and unconcerned, 
he sits and gazes into space ; doctors and parents regard this, 
at first, as mere laziness. The condition continues for years ; 
he may be taken to a doctor who diagnoses it as neurasthenia. 
Some time later, he may suddenly do something quite ab- 
surd and the parents wake up to the seriousness of the situa- 
tion ; or he may commit some gross act in public and be ar- 
rested and sent to the hospital for the insane. Now this is 
one of the greatest entities in mental diseases. I may safely 
say that the bulk in the insane hospitals is made up of just 
this group and the prognosis is very bad. As I have said, 
patients of this type never recover ; they sometimes improve 
sufficiently for the average layman to consider normal, but 
the majority of them never leave the asylum. They always 
retain a mental scar. 

Another entity which Kraepelin discovered was the so- 
called manic depressive group of insanity; patients afflicted 



SYMPTOM: ITS NATURE AND FUNCTION .29 

with this disease manifest sometimes symptoms of mania, 
that is, a condition of marked excitement and exaltation, and 
sometimes melancholia, that is, a condition of extreme de- 
pression and retardation of thought and action. He found 
that cases that sometimes thus show mania and sometimes 
melancholia run a definite course throughout life; they 
usually have attacks of melancholia followed by mania, after 
which there is an interval ranging from a few months to a 
few years ; they then begin a new cycle. If you examine the 
life history of a patient who may have such attacks, you find 
that they last a certain period, and then he recovers. Such 
patients are designated in common parlance, as crazy, par- 
ticularly when they have the manic attacks. They may have 
four or six or ten attacks of melancholia during their life, 
soon shake off the depression and recover, and not show the 
slightest mental scar. 

When the first of these entities, dementia praecox, was in- 
vestigated a few years ago in the Manhattan State Hospital 
in New York, it was found that over 70 per cent of the cases 
had open delusions of sex. If the investigation had gone a 
little further, and sex were taken to mean what Freud gen- 
erally designates as sex, that is, the individual's love-life, I 
have not the slightest doubt but what it would have been 
found to be 100 per cent. According to the common con- 
ception of sex, in other words, a woman fondling a bundle 
of rags, as if it were her baby, was not regarded as mani- 
festing a sexual disturbance; we, however, look upon the 
case as being sexual, because it deals with her love-life. If 
people generally would regard sex in the light that we do, 
they would readily see that it is present in all mental dis- 
turbances. Thus Freud's dictum that no neurosis is possible 
in a normal sex life holds true even in the psychosis. I 
have had the privilege of addressing a large gathering of lay- 
men some time ago, and it was noteworthy that after I had 



3 o PSYCHOANALYSIS 

explained to them in what broad sense Freud and his pupils 
use the term sex, their former resentment was gone ; some of 
them declared that if by sex we thus mean everything re- 
lating and growing out of the love-life of the individual, 
there was no question at all but what they were absolutely 
in accord with our stand. 

We can lay it down as a fundamental that if a person's 
love-life is adequately adjusted, his adjustment to life gener- 
ally is normal. On the other hand, those who are unadjusted, 
suffering from a neurosis or psychosis, are maladjusted sex- 
ually. Let us not imagine for a moment that there is anything 
degenerate in an individual who is thus imbued with con- 
scious or unconscious sex cravings; we are born with the 
impulses, and it is only the person who does not possess them 
that is really abnormal ; he is as unfortunate as those who are 
born deaf and dumb. The normal average person has a love- 
life and it has to manifest itself in some way; it is Just as 
essential for a person to have an outlet in his love-life as to 
have pure air and food to sustain himself ; if he has not, he 
eventually has to suffer for it. Now civilization has 
rendered the normal outlet very difficult: with the advance 
of civilization the struggle for existence has been more and 
more lightened, but as far as satisfying the emotion of love 
is concerned, he finds himself in a somewhat embarrassing 
and critical situation: with the advance of civilization, the 
outward expression of love has become more and more diffi- 
cult. Our sex impulses are most assiduously guarded; 
society is most severe in its censorship of all manifestations 
of sex: the sex impulses are continually subjected to a merci- 
less criticism. In our Anglo-Saxon communities, they have 
not even the esthetic and social outlet, because of the too 
great separation that we find between the sexes. The result 
is that, owing to the matrimonial difficulties and the two 
children system, the women especially who have not been 



SYMPTOM: ITS NATURE AND FUNCTION 31 

able to express themselves adequately for centuries and whose 
lot is growing harder and harder in our civilization, suffer 
from a marked need of love. If you find a woman de- 
pressed and out of sorts with herself and weeping, who can- 
not tell you what is ailing her, you may safely conclude that 
she is craving for love; give her the necessary love outlet 
through happy marriage and children, and she will have no 
more crying spells. It is for this reason that hysteria has 
always been characterized by these crying spells, but no one 
ever made any effort to discover this underlying cause. A 
mother may suddenly lose her only child whom she loves 
deeply. If she is a sensitive woman who receives no love 
from her husband she will often develop a neurosis, for now 
that the child has gone out of her life, she has been cut off 
from her only love outlet. There is nothing degenerate in 
this; it is no more degenerate than to have pneumonia, or 
tuberculosis, or a broken leg. 

Some time ago a young woman consulted me, because, as 
she said, she was extremely nervous; she declared that she 
suffered from insomnia, that her appetite was poor, and that 
she entertained peculiar thoughts. When asked what she 
meant by peculiar thoughts, she replied that she simply 
could not stomach her mother who was constantly "getting 
in her way." Whenever, for instance, she wished to do 
something, however trifling, her mother stood in the way. 
There was nothing of love or sex as we commonly under- 
stand these terms, so that to one who is not accustomed to 
our viewpoint, it would have shown nothing wrong sexually. 
But as there is a very vital and intimate relation between 
child and parent, there was really a disturbance in the love- 
life of this young woman. So you see how different our 
conception of sex is from that ordinarily held. 

Some women will sometimes say to me with manifest 
feeling : "Now, doctor, you don't have to ask me about love 



32 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

or sex, for I never experienced such a thing in my life, and 
what is more, I never bother with such trifles." But let us 
remember that love is the very mainspring and breath of life, 
the vis vitalis, as it were. Indeed, everything in life may be 
reduced to two fundamental instincts : hunger and love ; they 
are the supreme rulers of the world, as Schiller has put it : 

"Einstweilen, bis den Bau der Welt, 
Philosophic zusammen halt 
Erhalt sie das Getriibe 
Durch Hunger und durch Liebe." 

From a purely biological standpoint, the impulse of hunger 
or self-preservation has gradually lost its importance with 
the advance of civilization ; it has, however, not entirely been 
eliminated. We still have to work for the necessities of life, 
but it is no longer that bitter and dangerous struggle of 
primitive times when a man was compelled to forage and 
risk his life. To-day no one need really starve from hunger ; 
and what is more, he is not permitted to do so, even if he 
should want to. How zealously do the authorities work to 
break a hunger-strike! I myself have fed insane persons 
through the nose for as long as two and three years until they 
consented to take nourishment in the normal way. But the 
satisfaction of the sex cravings has become, as we have said, 
a more and more distressing problem with the advance of 
civilization. We find that in the whole range of the animal 
kingdom nature has made definite provisions for sex which 
begins to manifest itself at puberty. But in a state of civil- 
ization the human being cannot live as the animal, and instead 
of exercising his biological functions as destined by nature, is 
forced by society to defer them to a later period of his ex- 
istence. It means, of course, a tremendous amount of con- 
trol and effort on the part of the individual ; and it may be 
of interest for you to know that there is not a young man 
or woman with whom I have come into intimate touch who 



SYMPTOM: ITS NATURE AND FUNCTION 33 

has not had trying and terrible struggles in thus repressing 
the sexual feelings. 

I would have you note here that our conception of sex 
applies also to children. This may sound a bit startling to 
you, so let me proceed at once to illustrate what I mean with 
one or two examples: A child of about three and a half 
years old absolutely refuses to do whatever it is bidden; it 
has been an angelic little creature, and suddenly a complete 
transformation occurs. It cries, resists every effort to make 
it do anything and is absolutely unmanageable; the doctor 
has been called in, but medicines have proved ineffective. 
Here is the history of the case: It was the youngest of a 
few children in the home ; the parents have separated ; it was 
found that the mother carried on an amour with a certain 
man and she naturally had to leave the house; the children 
were placed in charge of a very fine governess. The mother 
was a woman of an emotional type and very much attached to 
her children. The governess was a typical English lady, cold 
and strict with the children. The older children who were all 
past the fifth year managed to get along quite well ; if they 
resented anything at all, they registered their protests in the 
open and the affair was over. But this youngest child at 
once began to cry and behave in the strange fashion I have 
described. The symptoms surprised me ; it behaved like a 
grown-up person suffering from dementia praecox. Of 
course, I decided at once upon the nature of the cure. The 
child's love-life was disturbed; it was accustomed to re- 
ceive love from its mother, and suddenly a new environment 
interfered ; this cold-blooded woman came into its life, who 
looked at everything objectively, impersonally; the child was 
pining for the mother's affection. It took me quite a little 
while before I had matters so arranged that the mother 
could see the child every other day. It soon recovered and 



34 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

has been well ever since. We say there was a disturbance in 
the sexual or love-life of the child. 

Or consider the case of another child of four years who 
was perfectly well until the parents decided to send away 
the French governess. The little girl grew very depressed, 
was bitterly incensed at her mother and remarked to her 
father: "If mademoiselle will be sent away, I'll die herself." 
She had not yet learned to say "myself." The father, who 
was a physician, was very much alarmed ; he came to me and 
declared quite frankly that he did not know what to do. I 
assured him that I had no doubt at all that if the child had 
been given enough attention by the mother, she would not 
behave in that way; that now that it was decided to send 
away the governess, upon whom she was depending for her 
love, she felt that she would be left all alone. Indeed, how 
would an adult feel, if he were separated from the one 
person whom he loves? The doctor assured me that that 
was exactly the situation; that he always felt that his wife 
neglected the little girl. I advised him to see that his wife 
take her place as mother to the child, play with her, and give 
her of her affection, and then dismiss the governess. Thus 
the problem was solved : the little girl received a normal love 
outlet. 

We must remember, however, that the sexual life of the 
child is different from'that of the adult. The sex-life of the 
former consists of what we generally think of as love; it 
likes to be petted and fondled and humored, it likes to re- 
ceive attention and have its way in its own little world. 
Later on, when it grows into manhood or womanhood, there 
will be other manifestations, which we do not find, of course, 
in childhood. Yet these first and early emotional reactions 
are just as much a part of its sex-life as the later ones. 
Whenever we find, then, an emotional disturbance, let us not 
fail to examine the parents' behavior, if it is present in a 



SYMPTOM: ITS NATURE AND FUNCTION 35 

child; if in an adult, let us remember the words of Dumas 
pere : "cherchez la f emme." 

In speaking about the neurotic, we said that the symptom 
represents some painful emotional experience in the past 
which he tried to crowd out of consciousness, to 
forget. Thus it is in a very real sense, an emo- symptom 
tional outlet, and that is why patients intrinsi- outlet 
cally, though unconsciously, are loathe to give 
it up; there is, as we have said, a morbid gain. It some- 
times happens that there can be no normal, wholesome outlet 
for some loss or misfortune, from the very nature of things, 
we might say. Take, for instance, the case of a woman who 
has lost her husband, and has no children, no relatives, no 
financial resources. She is also in no condition, by virtue of 
age and other factors, to think that she can go into the world 
and find some normal outlet, such as marriage. She be- 
comes hysterical and we find her in a hospital. She is in- 
telligent and sensible and when you begin to discuss her 
case with her, she will presently tell you that she really does 
not know what she can or will do when she leaves the 
hospital. When you assure her that you will cure her, she 
begins to worry about the awful void ahead of her : for in- 
deed, she has nothing to live for. In other words, the doctor 
who attempts to cure her, is face to face with a herculean 
task. We had, of course, an altogether different situation 
in the case of that young woman who had that pain in her 
arm. One could see at once that she could and ought to be 
cured; there was everything in her favor; her complaining 
about the pain and her consulting doctors was really a sub- 
stitute, I might say, for the love for which she was ardently 
craving; all that she had to do was to learn to face reality. 
In proportion, then, as a normal outlet is lacking, the patient 
will continue to hold on to the symptom more and more 



36 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

firmly. Thus, given two young people who are equally sick, 
if one derives a greater morbid gain from the neurosis than 
the other, he will remain sick much longer than the other to 
whom fortune has not been so "kind." The time required to 
cure a patient is directly proportional, we might say, to the 
degree in which he is morbidly benefited by his neurosis. 

In the same way there are persons who simulate insanity ; 
it is in itself an outlet, a sort of morbid gain. In the olden 
times when an individual dissembled madness, he was 
brutally punished for it ; the doctor would presumably cure 
him by the very simple device of turning a hose of cold water 
on him. If he survived the treatment, he was fired out of 
the hospital with very little ceremony. But let us not 
forget that even those cases who simulate are abnormal ; no 
normal persons will resort to such an outlet. An individual 
who acts in this fashion is sick and we should treat him as 
such. To-day we impress upon him that we know he is 
feigning, but we do not treat him with brutality. The com- 
missioner of correction asked me some time ago to examine 
a man of this type who was accused of a certain crime. 
There was a friend of mine with me who is not a physician 
and I told him that the case was a puzzle to medical men. 
When I examined this fellow he played crazy and did all 
sorts of queer things. I gave him a thorough examination 
in the presence of my friend whom I addressed as doctor. 
I said: "Doctor, it is the rarest case I have ever seen," and 
I mentioned some medical name. "I am quite sure that in 
this case there is such and such a condition; just to cor- 
roborate the diagnosis, I'll wager that if I take the man's arm 
and stretch it out, he will hold it in that position indefinitely." 
Before I had the opportunity to do that, he did it himself ; 
the poor fellow tried very hard to feign various conditions. 
I told him that there was to be no prevarication and he soon 
confessed that he was deceiving and begged me to help him. 



SYMPTOM: ITS NATURE AND FUNCTION 37 

I made it very clear to him that I would help him on the con- 
dition that he be straightforward and honest. No one can 
feign insanity. When a person tells the doctor he has 
pneumonia, it may be proven^ by just listening to the chest. 
Likewise in insanity, there is nothing that has not been re- 
duced to a certain definite form and condition. When a 
person is really insane, his insanity is manifest. I have 
never found any one who has succeeded in counterfeiting it, 
and I have seen malingerers here and abroad. They may 
succeed in bamboozling some doctors who do not know. 
You will occasionally read in the newspapers that some men 
have simulated insanity and then declare that they are not at 
all insane, but I know for a fact that a real insane person 
would be the last one to plead he is insane. Let us bear in 
mind that any individual who tries to pretend insanity or 
hysteria, no matter in what difficult straits he find himself, 
is abnormal, for no normal person would resort to such an 
outlet. 

We see this mechanism very often in a less pronounced 
form. A patient informed me once that when she was 
young she found that she was treated well when sick, and so 
whenever she did not wish to go to school, she would say that 
she had a headache. That was her way of solving the prob- 
lem. Now she really has those headaches and is unable to 
do important work that she even likes, though it is note- 
worthy that the headaches are far more severe when she has 
to attend to something she dislikes. 

What we said about the neurosis applies also to the psy- 
chosis. Like the neurotic symptom, the insane condition 
serves as an emotional outlet, it enables the patient to realize 
his wish. Some individuals upon experiencing some heavy 
shock or misfortune, cannot resign themselves to the actual 
reality. The problem is such a mooted and difficult one 
that in order to solve it at all they have to tear themselves 



38 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

away from reality completely. When they become insane, 
the wish that they desire to realize is then fulfilled in their in- 
sane condition. Here, too, we see that there is an attempt at 
adjustment, there is a morbid gain. Let me give you an 
example : 

A few years ago there was much discussion in New 
York City on the need for laborers up the state for the 
harvest. Many tailors and people in similar vocation were 
then out of employment; one of these men who was quite 
poor was very glad to take advantage of the opportunity, 
particularly since he heard he would earn from three to 
four dollars a day and free board besides. When he was 
put to work as a farmer, however, it was found that he was 
not at all fitted or strong enough for the work. The result 
was that he was made a fool of by the farmer and his sons. 
He became quite sullen and morose and when once, upon 
provocation, he dared to retort, they gave him a sound 
thrashing and fired him. What was more, they would not 
pay him what was due him. He appealed for redress in 
the local court of justice, but everybody turned a deaf ear 
on him. He was about one hundred and sixty miles away 
from the city, and as he could not scrape up any money, he 
was compelled to walk home. He reached the city, fagged 
out and starved, crying for revenge. He consulted a lawyer 
who asked him for ten dollars as a retainer : the poor fellow 
did not have a cent. He was at a loss : wherever he turned 
he could receive no justice. Burning for redress, he would 
perpetually talk about it to his wife; he could not shake it 
off from his mind. One day he became fearfully excited, 
he shouted, kicked at the bedsteads, tore the pillows, heaping 
all the while all manner of abuse on the farmer. The wife 
was alarmed and sent for an ambulance ; he was taken to the 
Bellevue hospital, where I saw him. He hallucinated and 
was continually raging against the farmer, who he imagined 



SYMPTOM: ITS NATURE AND FUNCTION 39 

was right there before him. He soon quieted down and 
after talking with him for a while I grasped immediately 
the true nature of his condition: the poor man behaved in 
that strange fashion, for he had no other way of giving vent 
to his feelings. 

I might tell you right here the meaning of some of the 
terms I am using. By hallucinations, I mean false percep- 
tions, that is, apparent perceptions without corresponding 
external objects. If a person sees things that do not exist 
at the time, he is suffering from hallucinations of sight; 
if he hears voices when nobody is talking to him, he suffers 
from hallucinations of hearing; if he mistakenly feels that 
an animal, for instance, is crawling in his stomach, he has 
a sensory hallucination. Thus all the senses can produce 
hallucinations. An illusion, on the other hand, is just a 
perverted sensation, there is a corresponding external object 
but it is falsely interpreted. When a person, for instance, 
suffering from alcoholic insanity, declares that there are 
snakes crawling over a carpet, he is simply misinterpreting 
the figures and designs there; he calls them snakes because 
of certain poisons in the nerves of the retina. Thus, too, an 
individual who hears some one talk and insists that the latter 
is talking about him, whereas he really is not, is suffering 
from an illusion. On the other hand, a delusion is a false 
idea which is absolutely fixed and from which you cannot 
reason the patient away. When a man informs you that 
he is the emperor of China and you know that he is an 
ordinary New York tailor, then he has a delusion of 
grandeur; or if a man tells you he is the real pope and his 
enemies have substituted a sham pope in his place, when you 
know that he is perhaps a hod carrier, he has delusions of 
grandeur and persecution. 

The psychosis, then, being a form of abnormal adjustment 
in itself, an abnormal attempt at a solution of some inner 



40 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

problem, the expressions of the insane cannot be meaning- 
less; they have significance and value in terms of the 
essential psychic conflicts. Before Freud came on the scene, 
no attention was paid to the utterances of the insane. We 
know now that their hallucinations and delusions are not 
at all meaningless or irrational, that they have their raison 
d'etre. In no light sense, may we say that there is method 
in madness. Take, for instance, the insane woman who appar- 
ently falls in love with every doctor. Upon examination, you 
will find that she had an unhappy love affair and she identifies 
some other man with her lover who had forsaken her. In 
other words, in order to checkmate nature, as one might say, 
she tears herself away from reality. It is in itself an abnor- 
mal adjustment. When we are overtaken by some misfor- 
tune, we all seek refuge in different ways; some throw 
themselves into scientific or literary work, others into social 
activity or business. Thus in time sorrow loses its keen edge. 
Some people, however, cannot do this; they represent a 
special type of sensitive material. More than 50 per cent 
of all the patients in insane asylums are of this type. They 
are men and women who could not learn to accept the facts, 
who could not "forget." Instead, they tore themselves away 
from reality altogether, and realized their wish in their own 
way, thus solving the problem. 

It has been pointed out that the symptom is the resultant 
of two psychic streams both striving for expression, one, the 
The foreconscious, subjecting the activity of the 

asck?m- m o tner > tne unconscious, to a sort of critique 
promise which results in an exclusion from consciousness. 
The basic meaning of the symptom, no matter what the 
symptom may be, whether paralysis, aphonia, or delirium, 
is absolutely unknown to the person; its mechanisms are 
entirely incomprehensible to the average observer. I can 



SYMPTOM: ITS NATURE AND FUNCTION 41 

make this clear to you by giving you a complete example. 
A woman of about thirty-five is unhappily married. Her 
husband treats her most brutally and she detests him; she 
would leave him but she loves her children deeply, and feels 
that such a move on her part would be quite detrimental 
to their good name and welfare. In her distress, she turns 
to a certain friend of her husband, who sympathizes with 
her and is very eager to do all he can to help her out of 
her difficulties. In the course of time they fall in love. 
He is a married man and that, of course, complicates the 
situation even more. He assures her that she is perfectly 
justified in behaving as she does, for her husband's brutal 
treatment is without doubt unjust and reprehensible. That, 
of course, carries much weight with her, because she met 
this man originally through her husband who was a former 
classmate of his. They begin to think seriously of securing 
divorces and marrying, but here again, the man cannot 
resign himself to the idea of leaving his children. This is 
quite characteristic of people of this type; they can never 
gather sufficient strength to carry out what they wish to do, 
they are so much under the influence of their early bringing- 
up. Be that as it may, they played with the idea for years. 
She used to reproach herself for her conduct, for at bottom 
she was really quite religious and regarded matrimony with 
a deep sense of sacredness. In time, the man suggested 
sexual relations, to which she objected quite strenuously. 

One day he made an appointment with her to meet her at 
a certain place : she knew very definitely just what the nature 
of the rendezvous would be. However, she apparently de- 
cided to go, left her home, and walked over to the car which 
passed in front of her house. As she was waiting for it, 
she suddenly felt a pain in her heart, she became flushed, her 
heart began to palpitate, and she feared that she would faint. 
An officer assisted her home and she was confined to bed. 



42 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

At first the doctor thought she had heart trouble, but after 
a few days she was able tc leave the bed and it was found 
that there was really nothing wrong with her heart. She 
presently went out to shop and the moment she found herself 
in the street she began to fear that she would have another 
such attack ; she returned home and took her little girl with 
her, so that she might not be alone in case something serious 
should happen to her. The family gradually began to realize 
that she was afraid to go out alone. Finally she came to 
see me. 

What is the deeper significance of this situation? We 
see here two opposite psychic streams in conflict. From a 
biological viewpoint, the woman was entitled to her share 
of love and affection ; there was the primitive emotion which 
a woman of this type, and for that matter every woman, 
would naturally experience when confronted with a situation 
of this character; here on one side was her husband who 
maltreated her and on the other, a man who sympathized 
with her, loved her and was ready to help her in every way. 
But on the other hand, there is the thought of religion, ouf 
early training and society: we are brought up to feel that 
such an emotion is immoral, that only legitimate love is 
right. And so, as you see, there was a constant struggle ; she 
felt that had she kept the rendezvous, she would have com- 
mitted adultery, she would have sinned, and so unconsciously 
she decided not to go. When I inquired what she feared, 
when she went out into the street, she replied that she was 
in terror of falling. You see what she really had in mind 
was a moral falling. Her fear of falling and perhaps of 
being run over and killed was a symbolic representation of 
her fear of committing sin. Thus, in a sense, she solved the 
problem. There was a compromise effected by the two 
streams in the form of the symptom. We designate a 
nervous condition of this type as an "anxiety hysteria." It 



SYMPTOM: ITS NATURE AND FUNCTION 43 

is a psychoneurotic disturbance which manifests itself pre- 
dominantly through fear or anxiety. 1 

There are, of course, many forms of nervous disturbances, 
into which we cannot enter here. There is one type about 
which I may say a few words right now, because it is so 
commonly referred to. It manifests itself in all kinds of 
obsessions, doubts and fears, and is known as a "compulsion 
neurosis," that is, a neurosis which is characterized through- 
out by a marked compulsiveness in thought and act. A 
patient suffering of such a condition may go to bed, for 
instance, then pause and wonder whether she locked the door, 
get up, assure herself that she did, and return to bed. A 
minute later it occurs to her that in locking it she may have 
perhaps unlocked it, and so she cannot rest until she makes 
sure. She may continue to go through this little performance 
perhaps one or two dozen times through the night. We call 
it doubting mania, "folies de dout." Some sufferers of this 
type have a tendency to reason perpetually, ad nauseam. A 
person will begin to reason about some problem that he 
himself knows is absolutely absurd, but he cannot refrain 
from doing so. A man, for instance, who is not at all in- 
terested in socialism will suddenly begin to think of it; no 
matter where and when he meets a person he will be won- 
dering whether that person is a socialist; he will bombard 
people with the most absurd questions on the subject. An- 
other man who is not a bit interested in hypnotism will 
constantly ask questions about it; he consults all doctors 
who have the reputation of being specialists on the subject 
and finds out what they think on this or that phase of it. 
He feels that it is absolutely important that he should know 
all about it. 

The case of the woman I have just described is, as you 
see, a nervous disturbance essentially growing out of the 

1 This particular form of fear is known as "agoraphobia." 



44 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

conflict between what she considered right and wrong, moral 
and immoral. It is a neurosis, and we distinguish it from a 
psychosis in that the latter is a mental disturbance in which 
the individual, unlike the neurotic, detaches himself com- 
pletely from reality and behaves as if he does not belong 
there at all. To illustrate : A young lady of about twenty- 
nine is taken to me by her brother, who is a physician. He 
informs me that she has been acting strangely for the last 
four weeks, and he fears that she is a little out of her mind. 
She insists that all the girls in the shop where she is em- 
ployed talked disparagingly about her; she cries, does not 
wish to leave the house, and wants to move out of the 
neighborhood because all the neighbors are in a conspiracy 
against her. As a result, she is in a state of marked de- 
pression. Her brother is right : of course there is something 
wrong with an individual who deems himself so important 
and popular as to have people everywhere talk about him. 
After insisting upon her to tell me what the world had to 
say about her, she finally said : "Everybody keeps on saying 
that I am a bad girl, that I have committed a lot of sex 
crimes." On further examination I learned the following: 
A young man began to call on her of late ; he has been paying 
her quite a little attention. Some time passed, she was 
feeling well apparently, when she got a toothache. (It is 
significant that the young man was a dentist.) She had the 
tooth extracted and as gas had been administered, she was a 
little nervous and delirious after the operation. Since then 
she had entertained those ideas. She went on to assure me 
that the condition is entirely due to the fact that those girls 
are mean and jealous; that they make these slanderous re- 
marks about her person because they are anxious to estrange 
the young man from her. Her brother then told me that 
he felt quite convinced that the main cause for her nervous- 
ness is the fact that the young man upon whom she had 



SYMPTOM: ITS NATURE AND FUNCTION 45 

built so many hopes, has not shown himself enough attentive 
of late ; that in fine, he stopped calling on her. 

The sexual import of the situation is quite patent. The 
girl was well brought up, quiet and well-behaved, and re- 
spectable in every way. Why then should she have such 
delusions, you will ask; they would seem to be incompatible 
with her own nature. Now there is a mechanism which we 
call "projection," by virtue of which we throw out to the 
outside world feelings and emotions which we have repressed. 
We say other people are saying or doing what we have re- 
pressed, what indeed, we ourselves once would have liked to 
say or do. Such delusions are called delusions of reference, 
Besuhungswahn, in German. We mean by this that a per- 
son will interpret everything that is being said by people in 
his environment as referring to himself. The deeper mean- 
ing of the situation, then, lay just in this, that when the man 
stopped calling on her, everybody in her home began to 
criticize and blame her. Her mother and brother declared 
that she was by no means bad-looking, that on the other 
hand, she was quite attractive, intelligent and sensible, that 
she had friends, but that her great drawback was that she 
was too "good." She had native gifts, but of what use are 
they, if one does not put them to the best use? That was 
their mode of reasoning. In other words, they hardly 
troubled to disguise the fact that what she had to learn yet 
was to be a trifle bad. Apropos of this, I might say that 
this is one of those fanciful emotions that practically all 
moral women sometimes secretly desire to taste. We have 
named it the "being naughty motive," the "prostitution 
complex." So many respectable women have very often told 
me that they do wish they could have the experience of 
being a prostitute for an hour so that they might know just 
what it means. They are shocked by the very thought, but 
it is pleasing and thrilling none the less. This woman per- 



46 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

haps never thought of it, but when it was driven home to 
her that she lost this man simply because she kept him at 
such a distance, because she adhered too strictly to the little 
proprieties and conventions of social life, she fully realized 
its significance and straightway the repressed thought comes 
to the surface and her unconscious wish is realized: she is 
really immoral and for that reason the young man left her. 
Thus, she who is at bottom an ethical individual must per- 
force come to the conclusion that the young man repulses 
her because she is bad, and immoral, and not because she is 
too good and moral. 

The underlying significance of all these conditions, the 
nature of all these mechanisms, have not been understood, 
as I have said, before Freud ; nowadays we can always find 
the reason of these phenomena and in this way cure most of 
the patients. By this, of course, I do not mean to imply that 
psychoanalysis is the panacea in all nervous and mental 
diseases, that every and any disease is amenable to the 
psychoanalytic therapy. I wish to say, on the contrary, that 
this treatment, like every other, has its marked limitations. 
It is applicable to a limited number of diseases only; and 
furthermore, the person who is treated by this method must 
be an individual of the higher type, mentally, morally, and 
in every other way. Every one can be psychoanalyzed, but 
analyzing and curing a patient are two entirely different 
matters ; and the wise physician will not attempt to analyze 
one whom he does not think he can cure. There is no doubt, 
however, that psychoanalysis can help us to understand prob- 
lems in various fields of vital human interest that were 
formerly altogether inscrutable to us. Furthermore, it 
enables us to see very clearly the forces that tend to upset 
and unbalance the individual, and thus is of invaluable 
service as prophylaxis. 



CHAPTER III 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FORGETTING 

The main basis of Freud's psychology is that there is 
nothing accidental or arbitrary in the psychic life, that every- 
thing has reason and meaning. It matters not how complex 
or simple the condition may be, it has significance, and this 
significance may be discovered through analysis. There is 
thus a tremendous number of mistakes in speech and thought 
manifestations which we commonly make, that getting" 
reveal, in a surprising way, the individual's real *ec5Si 
thoughts and motives. They are, as we say, JJ^*" 
symbolic expressions or psychopathological actions, incorrect 
psychic activities which the individual daily performs and of 
which he is not aware at the time. They have not been 
hitherto investigated, I mean psychologically, because they 
were regarded as essentially organic disturbances. I am re- 
ferring to such faulty actions as lapses of memory, lapses of 
talking, mistakes in writing, dreams in the normal individual, 
and convulsions, deliria, visions, and obsessive acts in neu- 
rotics and psychotics. The psychologist has paid little atten- 
tion to these phenomena because they presumably belonged 
to pathology, and the physician, to whom they were baffling 
and recondite to the last degree, passed them by, as if they 
did not at all exist. Freud in working with his patients 
began to pay attention to them because he found, as I have 
already said, that they all had a certain import and genetic 
basis. He thus developed in time what we may call a 
symbolic language. If you understand this language, you 

47 



48 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

will then realize how it manifests itself practically all the time 
in our daily lives. Understand this symbolism and how full 
of meaning will be your friend's forgetting to do or say 
something! Sometimes a patient will be startled by what 
seems to him nothing short of psychic powers on the part 
of the psychoanalyst. I asked a woman to-day whether she 
has had a particular dream during her life, and she replied : 
"Oh, yes, I usually dream of mountains and water and 
waves and I delight in them greatly; but then, I have the 
same dreams when I am half awake and I despise them." 
My next question was : "Tell me, up to what age did you 
wet the bed ?" and quite embarrassed she answered : "Until 
I was quite old." She wondered and then asked me how I 
knew it. This type of dream is quite characteristic of people 
who wet the bed; and there was really nothing remarkable 
in my arriving at the conclusion. Everything that a person 
does, the way he dresses or walks, his bearing and demeanor, 
his manner of talking, all have a definite meaning. I do 
not know whether you are aware of the fact that we are 
taught in medicine to observe carefully these seemingly trivial 
things. Take a patient, for instance, who may have had 
some brain disturbance, let us say a slight hemorrhage, but 
whose history is so vague that we cannot tell whether he did 
or not. In such a case we may very often make a diagnosis 
by examining the way his shoe is worn out and thus deter- 
mine definitely whether or not he had some brain disturbance. 
The result of the slightest cerebral hemorrhage shows its 
effects in the gait; the patient wears off a little of the right 
or left of his shoe, and that is enough to give you a clue to 
his condition. If it has been a slight attack, it will evade 
the observation of the average observer but the experienced 
physician can detect it in the way he drags one of his limbs. 
We must have a sharp eye for these little things about a 
person, particularly in the Insane Asylum. Very few insane 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FORGETTING 49 

people tell us what we want them to, and it remains for the 
physician to make the diagnosis at once, for he has the 
patient's relatives forever on his heels, anxious to learn of 
what disease the patient suffers and how long it will be 
before he gets well and is able to come home. Sometimes, 
too, in their great eagerness and solicitude, they will ask you 
all that, before you have even had the opportunity to speak 
to the patient. And then, a great many of the insane do not 
talk and yet the doctor must make the diagnosis and give 
an intelligent answer. "But," you ask, "how can a diagnosis 
be made, if the patient does not talk?" But that is just the 
point : to an experienced physician his inability to speak may 
be due to some physical cause, such as aphasia, or perhaps 
to some mental retardation. The patient may move his lips, 
taking perhaps a half hour in his efforts to answer; you can 
see very clearly without knowing anything about lip reading, 
that he is trying hard to talk but cannot ; he is suffering from 
mental retardation. Then, too, other patients actually refuse 
to talk, in which case of course the diagnosis must necessarily 
be different. We can tell at once that the patient who suffers 
of this mental retardation and has nothing organically wrong 
with him will recover ; we can discuss his case with the same 
degree of definiteness as we can some physical condition. If 
the disturbance is organic, the prognosis can be made ac- 
cordingly. In short, we must learn to observe and under- 
stand the patient. 

In thus inquiring into the significance of psychopathologi- 
cal actions, Professor Freud made a study of forgetting. 
People generally regard forgetting as a common occurrence 
and I hear a good deal about it from patients, who very often 
inform me that they are very nervous and that they are 
forgetting all the time. When I sometimes ask the person 
to give me an example, he stops and thinks for a long time 
and then declares that last week he had to do such and such 



50 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

a thing at such and such a place, but forgot. Now imagine 
a person who is forgetful, remembering what happened last 
week ! In the final analysis there is but one kind of forget - 
fulness, organic forgetfulness. If one forgets in any real 
sense of the word he has some organic brain trouble which 
can be diagnosed by a physician or neurologist in about ten 
minutes. If there is no organic condition, his so-called 
forgetting may be ultimately reduced to two causes: first, 
that he really did not wish to remember what he claims he 
"forgot"; secondly, that he either never knew it or that he 
never considered it important enough to know. Eliminating 
the second factor, we find when we ask ourselves why we 
have forgotten to do something, that we did not wish to do 
it, that there was something in that particular act that was 
unpleasant or disagreeable. Think for a moment about the 
letter that you forgot to mail; it is probably a letter some 
one has asked you to mail and you did not have enough 
courage to refuse; or it may perhaps contain a check with 
which, though perfectly honest, you hated to part. Shall 
I assure you that in nine cases out of ten it does not contain 
a bill ? We never forget anything that we feel is important. 
I dare say, you will not carry a love letter in your pocket 
for days and forget to mail it. Some of you, I am sure, will 
hasten to remind me that when you were in college you knew 
one hundred trigonometrical formulas and that now, strange 
to say, you do not know one. But did you ever really wish 
to know them? You had to know them and just as soon as 
the examination was over you did not care to know them 
any longer. There is an important point here for pedagogs, 
it seems to me. What we really like we do not have to 
memorize. If you desire a child to remember some subject 
matter make it so vitally interesting that he will be very glad 
and anxious to remember it. It is a platitude to say that 
anatomy is a dry subject and yet I once had an instructor who 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FORGETTING 51 

taught it in such an absorbing, fascinating way that students 
came to his courses quite voluntarily. When one likes and 
enjoys the subject he teaches, he can transfer his interest 
in it to others. In psychic studies, the axiom is: like 
emotions beget like emotions. When you "forget" anything, 
then, it is either because you have never known it, and so 
there is really no reason why you should know it ; or, if you 
had known it well and now find that you cannot recall it, 
because it is essentially connected, directly or indirectly, with 
something disagreeable and painful. The mind is always 
protecting us from pain by pushing whatever is disagreeable 
and unpleasant into the unconscious. 

Psychoanalysis reveals that the various psychopathological 
actions are readily explainable on a psychological basis. 
Whatever we say or do must have a reason and can usually 
be explained without resorting to such superficial considera- 
tions as "absent-mindedness" or the like. The Scottish 
professor, who, on a momentous occasion, removed his 
every-day clothes and instead of dressing for dinner went 
to bed, cannot be excused on the ground of "absent-minded- 
ness." We must assume that he really preferred to go to 
bed than to the dinner, for any one who looks forward to a 
dinner of some importance will not forget and go to bed. It 
is such "little" things that disclose the individual's real motives 
and give us the key to the more complicated mental activities. 
There is a physical reason for a person who has an organic 
brain disturbance to forget what he has once well known, 
but if he shows no such disturbance there can be no other 
than a psychological reason for his lapse of memory. 

When I was an interne in the Clinic of Psychiatry at 
Zurich, I had an interesting experience in forgetting a name 
which I may say finally converted me to Freud's teachings. 
At that time, I was not fully convinced of his theories, and 



52 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

my attitude was skeptical though by no means unsympathetic. 
I approached the whole subject in the spirit of an investigator 
A and student who made every effort to discover 

Typical an d understand all the data before passing final 
of judgment on his psychology. Spurred on by 

g-ettingr Professor Bleuler, all the physicians in the hos- 
pital were firm and ardent workers with the new theories. 
In fact, we were in the only hospital or clinic where the 
Freudian principles were applied in the study and treatment 
of patients. Those were the pioneer days of Freud among 
psychiatrists, and we observed and studied and noted what- 
ever was done or said about us with unfailing patience and 
untiring interest and zeal. We made no scruples, for 
instance, of asking a man at table why he did not use his 
spoon in the proper way, or why he did such and such a thing 
in such and such a manner. It was impossible for one to 
show any degree of hesitation or make some abrupt pause 
in speaking without being at once called to account. We had 
to keep ourselves well in hand, ever ready and alert, for there 
was no telling when and where there would be a new attack. 
We had to explain why we whistled or hummed some par- 
ticular tune or why we made some slip in talking or some 
mistake in writing. But we were glad to do this if for no 
other reason than to learn to face the truth. 

One afternoon when I was off duty I was reading about 
a certain case which recalled to my mind a similar one I had 
when I was in a hospital here in New York. I am in the habit 
of making marginal notes and so I took up my pencil to write 
down the case, but when I came to note the name of the 
patient whom I had known for a number of months and in 
whom I had taken an unusual amount of interest, I found 
that I could not recall it. I tried very hard to bring it back 
to my mind, but without success. It was strange and 
puzzling; but as I knew definitely whom I meant I finished 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FORGETTING 53 

the note. Now according to Freud, I thought at once to 
myself, the name must be connected with something painful 
and unpleasant. I decided right there and then to find it by 
the Freudian method. As I have already told you, it con- 
sists essentially of freely or spontaneously associating until 
finally the disagreeable element is brought to the surface. It 
was my Sunday afternoon off and I had been looking for- 
ward to it with no little eagerness. The weather was clear 
and bracing and I was very anxious to be out in the open ; 
besides I had an appointment in the town which I did not 
like to break. But I was so eager to utilize every oppor- 
tunity to test the Freudian theory, that I at once took down 
one of those long yellow pads we used to use and began to 
write down my associations. 

Now the patient whose name I could not recall was the 
same man who some years ago attempted to set fire to the 
St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York; he gathered together 
some odds and ends before the entrance of the church and 
set fire to it. He was of course arrested, brought to the 
psychopathic pavilion in Bellevue and later to the State 
Hospital where he became my patient. I diagnosed him as 
a psychic epileptic. I decided that he suffered from a form 
of epilepsy which does not manifest itself in fits, as the 
general cases do, but rather in peculiar psychic actions which 
may last for a few minutes or hours or perhaps for weeks, 
months or years. Nobody agreed with me in the diagnosis ; 
my senior doctor held that the patient suffered from de- 
mentia praecox. I was firmly convinced, however, that my 
patient was what I designated him, for there are a great many 
epileptics who, instead of having the physical paroxysms 
which are usually associated with epilepsy, have what we 
call psychic equivalents, by virtue of which they go through 
all manner of complicated psychic experiences. They become 
dazed and unconscious and lose track of their old self ; they 



54 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

are then virtually different personalities and they may com- 
mit all sorts of crimes in their new person. I have actually 
known of murders committed and houses burned by people 
of this type. One man was reported to have killed his 
entire family, father, mother and six brothers in a fit of 
this kind; and when he came to himself again he was not 
at all aware of the horrors that he had perpetrated. 

Within a week or so the patient recovered and was entirely 
normal, thus corroborating my diagnosis in every respect. 
The patient told us that this was his fifth attack and that 
in some of his previous ones he had burned a railroad station, 
a church and several barns. He would run away from 
home, his wife and children, and wander off, scot-free, when 
one of these fits came upon him. He was an editor of a 
journal and newspaper in Canada, a man of considerable 
intelligence and refinement. On one of his attacks during 
the Boer war, he ran away from Canada and came to Lon- 
don, where, seeing calls for volunteers, he enlisted and was 
sent to South Africa. He fought bravely and was promoted 
to sergeant in a few weeks. When he came to himself, he 
was quite surprised to find himself a soldier and did not 
have the least idea how he got to South Africa. Previous 
experience told him, however, what his condition meant and 
upon reporting it to the physicians, he was honorably dis- 
charged. He sent a cable to his wife and returned home. 
He gave us various details about himself, the hospital where 
he found himself last, his former doctor, all of which we 
were soon able to corroborate. He had what we called a 
" fugue" or "poriomania." Cases like this have been reported 
where the person disappeared for as many as three years. 
Indeed, they are not as rare as you may suppose. 

Everybody congratulated me on my diagnosis, and I 
myself was greatly elated. The superintendent assured me 
that I had all good reason to be proud of myself and he went 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FORGETTING 55 

on to state, to my profound disappointment and displeasure, 
that he would report the case to a medical society. I had 
spent a tremendous amount of time and effort on it and 
desired to publish it as my first contribution to medical litera- 
ture. But he was the superintendent of the hospital, I was 
merely a practicing doctor; and so there was nothing else 
to do but face the situation with a stout heart. "Very well, 
sir," I said, but I felt quite differently, of course. When 
I told my colleagues about it they thought it was a huge 
joke; some of them even ventured to assure me that I had 
all good reason to be happy, for was I not saved the trouble 
of reading the paper before the medical society? A few 
days before the meeting, the superintendent asked me to 
bring him my prepared paper, but when I read it to him, he 
found himself face to face with an embarrassing situation. 
He asked me where I had gotten my numerous references, 
for I quoted from Italian, German and French sources, and 
when I went on to say that they were from the original and 
not mere translations, he felt reticent and faint about read- 
ing the paper as his own, for he could neither read nor 
translate these languages. "Now, I'll tell you, Brill, you 
had better go there and read it yourself," he said. I was 
very much pleased at this and felt quite relieved. But I 
soon learned that the programs were already printed and 
that the superintendent was down for reading the case. I 
went before the society and everybody thought it was the 
superintendent's paper and that he sent me merely to read it 
for him. You may realize how deeply I felt about the whole 
affair. Finally, to cap the climax, after I had read the paper, 
an editor of an obscure Medical Journal asked me for it for 
publication in his journal. I refused and told him that I 
would have it sent to a journal of neurology or psychiatry. 
But he lost no time to speak to the superintendent about it, 
with whom he had considerable influence, and I was soon 



$6 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

compelled to give him the paper with as much grace as I 
could then command. Now I am dwelling quite at length 
on the phase of the situation because I would like you to 
note carefully that there was enough of the disagreeable and 
unpleasant associated with the whole experience to account 
for my forgetting the name of the patient. 

For hours at end I sat there writing down the associations, 
but I was not a whit nearer to knowing the name than when 
I began. Various details and incidents came swarming into 
my mind and I had to write mighty rapidly to keep pace 
with them. I could see clearly how this New York patient 
looked, the color of his hair, the peculiar expression on his 
face. I became discouraged and thought to myself, "if that 
is the way to find a thing through the Freudian method, 1 
shall never be a Freudian." It was now evening and one 
of my colleagues, surprised to find me indoors, asked me 
to make his rounds for him inasmuch as I was not going 
out. I consented gladly, for I was tired of these Freudian 
labors. But when I was done, I felt refreshed and returned 
to the associations with renewed interest. At eleven o'clock 
I was still in as much darkness about the name as before. I 
went to bed disheartened and thoroughly disgusted with the 
whole affair. At about four o'clock in the morning I awoke 
and made a supreme effort to dismiss it from my mind, but 
in vain. Nolens volens, I soon began to associate in bed, 
and finally, at about a little after five, the long-sought name 
suddenly came to me. My j'oy and elation was not at all 
free from a sense of relief ; it was as if I had solved a long 
vexing problem. I have no doubt now that had I not been 
able to find it, I probably would never have continued to 
take the slightest interest in Freud. I spent so much time 
and effort in trying to ferret it out that I felt quite out of 
humor with myself; but I was well compensated no less 
by the sense of pleasure and satisfaction that went with 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FORGETTING 57 

the discovery, than by the fresh conviction it gave me in 
Freudian psychology. 

Now what was the situation ? Let me say first that when 
you begin to associate freely, you will soon be surprised to 
find that thousand of associations begin pouring in upon 
consciousness. Sometimes, three or four of these associa- 
tions come at the same moment and you pause and wonder 
which one to write down first. You soon make some selec- 
tion and continue. In my own case, I observed that a few 
very definite associations kept on recurring continually. 
Every time I asked myself the name of this New York 
patient, there would invariably come to my mind the case of 
a real epileptic I then had in the Zurich hospital. His name 
was Appenzeller, he was just a Swiss peasant, and I ex- 
plained the association on the ground that they were both 
epileptics, the New York patient, as you remember, being a 
psychic epileptic. Another continually recurring association 
was this: When I thought of the hospital in Long Island 
and all that happened there during the five years I was con- 
nected with it, one particular scene would stand out very 
clearly and prominently; my mind would revert to it all the 
time. There were very often forest fires near the hospital 
and on many occasions we had to go out and check them lest 
they reached our buildings. This particular scene was on 
a Friday; there was a big fire raging near the hospital and 
we had to send out as many doctors and nurses as we could 
possibly spare to help control it. I was there to see that 
there was no confusion, that things were carried out prop- 
erly; I was chatting with a physician who was with me in 
the same capacity. The fire was consuming a good deal of 
scrub pine; and now and then an attendant would succeed 
in shooting one of the rabbits that were fleeing from the 
brush wood. As I was standing there, the superintendent 
came up to us, passed some remark or other, and then spying 



58 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

a rabbit some distance away, asked one of the attendants 
for his shot-gun to try his skill, saying: "Let's see if I can 
get that rabbit." We all looked on knowingly, for we never 
had very much faith in the superintendent's marksmanship, 
and no mistake, he missed his aim and the rabbit escaped. 
He turned to me and declared somewhat uneasily, and by 
way of explanation, that his ringers slipped, for it was be- 
ginning to rain. I seemingly concurred in the observation, 
but in my heart I smiled at his discomfiture. I could see him 
very plainly as he stood there, saying, "Let's see if I can get 
that rabbit," and he would then aim, shoot and miss it. 
Finally I saw the scene again in the morning, and with the 
words, "Let's see if I can get that rabbit," the name came 
to me. It was Lapin, the French word for rabbit. Later 
on when I actually counted my associations I found that 
this particular association came up twenty-eight times more 
than any of the others. 

This may seem strange to you, but that is exactly the way 
the mind works unconsciously. The name was symbolically 
represented by the scene ; the whole situation was under re- 
pression and that is the manner in which the unconscious 
elaborated it. The repressed emotion attached itself to an 
actual occurrence: the superintendent fails to shoot the 
rabbit ; i.e., he fails to deprive me of the case. At the time 
of this incident I came from Paris and I tried not merely 
to talk French, but to think in French; and though I was 
in Switzerland where they speak Swiss-German, there were 
a great many people in my service from the French part of 
the country who spoke French. And so it was quite natural 
for the name to have thus presented itself in French guise. 
You can easily see also why I thought of Appenzeller. 
There was the sound association of the first part of Appen- 
zeller, Appen, Lapin; and what is just as important, both 
patients were epileptics. You may thus see, first, that there 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FORGETTING 59 

was something distinctly disagreeable and painful associated 
with the name, and secondly, that there was a definite sym- 
bolic expression of it in the form of a repressed emotion. 

That the image of the superintendent's shooting at the 
rabbit should thus symbolically express the whole situation 
will not sound so strange to you when you under- 
stand what we mean by symbols. We may define aff ° 
a symbol as an imperfect comparison between con- 
two objects which in reality may have very little 
resemblance; it is nothing but a form of comparison. If 
you observe children as they grow up and learn to talk, you 
will find that they are always thinking in pictures or symbols. 
There can be no doubt that they do not think in the sense 
that we generally suppose, that is, in the sense of reasoning, 
but that they merely associate and compare. Numerous ex- 
amples may be cited to substantiate this. 

A little girl once pointed to her knee which was bruised 
by a fall and exclaimed to her father: "Papa, here is a 
'babble.' " He was at first hard put to understand how she 
could think of calling the wound on her knee a "babble" 
because he knew that she called an apple a "babble." But 
upon a little reflection, he soon saw what she meant. The 
little girl was fourteen months old when she first began to 
see apples in an orchard in the country; she would try to 
pick up those that had fallen from the trees and would call 
them "babbles." Now you have all observed that an apple 
in falling from a tree receives what appears to be a wound, 
a sort of round dark yellowish mark. To the little child the 
contusion on her knee looked exactly like this mark, and 
so, by association, she called that, too, a "babble," but there 
was really no more real resemblance between the two than 
between Lapin, the name of the patient, ana a real rabbit. 
We see this same phenomenon among grown-ups ; when one 



60 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

invents a new piece of machinery he always names it in 
terms of what he knows, or he may select its most important 
attribute or attributes and name it accordingly. Automobile 
means self -moving, "auto" and "mobile," but not everything 
that moves by itself is an automobile, so that the name of 
and by itself will tell very little indeed to a person who has 
never seen this horseless machine. This applies also to such 
names as hydroplane, aeroplane, and the like. The new 
invention was defined in terms of our previous experience. 

I recall now a little boy whom I knew very well ; he was 
only two and a half years old and he would come to my room 
and I would give him a pad of paper and a pencil to play 
with. One day he drew what appeared to be a little circle 
and came up to me and said, "Here's an autobile." He did 
in fact the very thing that the inventor or any intelligent 
grown-up person does; to him the wheel was the predomi- 
nant and characteristic element in the automobile. Thus we 
see here a form of comparison, which is, in the final analysis, 
the sum and substance of all our thinking. When you de- 
clare, for instance, that you will think over some problem, 
you know very well from experience that if you wait a 
little while, you will be able to reach some sort of solution. 
In the final analysis, we are empiricists. Meanwhile it con- 
tinues to revolve in your mind; the particular situation is 
juxtaposed to similar situations, the particular condition is 
contrasted with similar conditions. Finally you decide the 
problem ; it is really decided for you. Of course, the nature 
of the decision depends entirely upon the type and char- 
acter of the individual. As a physician, if I defer stating 
a diagnosis of which I am not sure, I am merely taking a 
little more time to compare the particular patient in question 
with many others whom, it seems to me, he resembles. 
Finally I reach a conclusion; the case is either of this type 
or is allied to it, because it is absolutely characteristic of it. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FORGETTING 61 

So, too, a tried and astute general can decide and act quickly, 
for his accumulated past experience affords him immediate 
basis for quick and sound judgment. 

When my little boy was about three years old he was 
playing one day with a box of geometrical figures as used 
in a Montessori school. As you may know, these figures 
are all of jet black pasted on a white background. Pointing 
to one, he said, "What is this, Daddy?" I told him it was 
a triangle, to which he replied, "Then I'll sing a triangle," 
and he motioned with his arms in accompaniment. He then 
put it aside and inquired about another figure and when I 
told him it was a square, he said, "Then I'll sing a square." 
"And what's this, Daddy?" "An octagon;" and so he con- 
tinued repeating in each case that he would play that par- 
ticular figure. I was wondering how he came to this strange 
idea when I noticed that among the figures he took out of 
the box was the circle; in fact, judging by its position it 
must have been the first figure to be removed from the box. 
Now the jet black circle on the white background showed a 
close resemblance to phonograph records of which he was 
very fond, indeed so fond that he would even cry for them 
on many occasions. When he looked at the figure of the 
circle he undoubtedly took it for a phonograph record and 
after going through the movements of playing it, he took the 
next figure from the box. This, being the triangle, looked 
strange to him and caused him to ask what it was, but it did 
not interfere with the association already established in his 
mind. In his infantile mind he saw a resemblance between 
two things and straightway he transferred the significant 
attribute of the one to the other. He at once realized what 
seemed to him the essential similitude in a concrete case ; he 
carried it, so to say, to its logical conclusion. We may see 
the same mode of association in modern art ; the artist may 
say he has painted a nude lady walking down the stairs but 



62 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

what we may really perceive is but a conglomeration of 
geometrical figures. We have here an infantile expression 
on the part of the artist. The same process of thought can 
be observed in some modern music. I know a man to whom 
every song is a color, and every color a song ; like my little 
boy who sang a triangle he is thinking in pictures or symbols. 
We see this same form of expression also in the dream. 

Here is another little incident relating to my little boy 
that I feel is characteristic of the mode in which children 
associate ideas. When he was about three years old, he was 
attending a Montessori School; he was accustomed to be 
taken there in the morning either by the maid or by my 
wife. One day it stormed so very hard, that we could not 
get a taxi or take him to school under an umbrella. My wife 
was worried and wondered what to do, and I told her that 
I would carry him to school myself. I had him put his head 
on my shoulder and quickly we made our way in the heavy 
storm to the school building, which, by the way, was only 
a few blocks away from our home. He seemed to enjoy the 
experience immensely. About six months or so later it so 
happened that I had a little time and I said: "Shall I take 
you to school?" At once he answered: "Is it raining, 
Daddy ?" I did not know at first what he meant but I soon 
saw its significance. In other words, to him at that time, 
the act of my taking him to school became associated with 
rain. Behaviorists have pointed out that animals think in 
the same way; it is indeed stupid to maintain that they do 
not reason; they merely have not as much brains as the 
human being, therefore, not as many associations. The same 
holds true in defectives, they have not as much wealth of 
associations at their disposal as the average individual. When 
we shall take up the association experiment I shall try to 
show you how we can determine by noting their associations, 
the mental deficiency even of those who are only slightly 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FORGETTING 63 

defective, such as in morons, when the ordinary tests of the 
Binet-Simon type will not show anything. 

Observe children who have not yet realized the nature of 
abstract ideas and you will find that they invariably express 
themselves concretely, by means of comparison. A little 
girl of three years old was once taken to the aquarium and 
she saw among other things, a seal, with whose character- 
istic alacrity of movement she was greatly impressed. A 
few days later she talked enthusiastically about all that she 
had seen there, and said among other things, that she saw 
a thing that went this way, and here she motioned with her 
hands the quick movements of the seal. She had forgotten 
its name but she remembered its important attribute. You 
have observed children very often say "by-bye," when they 
finish drinking their milk; it is the first word that they 
usually learn. The idea is suggested to them by the analogy 
to departure. One can always find a definite reason for the 
apparent incongruous expressions evinced by children. It 
is simply a question of tracing their mode of association or 
comparison between things. The same mechanisms are con- 
stantly seen in the bizarre behaviors of the insane. 

There was a patient in the Psychiatric clinic at Zurich who 
would place folded rose petals against her forehead and hit 
them, thus producing a crackling sound. Nobody could 
fathom the meaning of this action until Professor Bleuler 
began to study her case thoroughly and found that she be- 
came insane upon her lover's committing suicide by shooting 
himself in the head. Thus her behavior in this particular 
instance was a symbolic representation of the shooting; she 
was reliving an old episode. 

The infantile form of thinking through simple comparison 
becomes less apparent as age advances. The child gradually 
enriches his vocabulary to enable him to express words in 
the constant acquisition of new knowledge. He is compelled 



64 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

to accept new terms for abstract ideas without resorting to 
conscious elaboration as he was wont to do in childhood. 
In his unconscious, however, the same process of imperfect 
comparisons prevail. That is why later in life such imperfect 
comparisons or symbols strike us as strange and foolish. 
When a grown-up hears her mother reminisce that as a little 
girl she said "la" when she meant "color," she not only ex- 
periences a feeling of strangeness but is also somewhat 
abashed at her former childishness, but the situation becomes 
clear when she consults her father's diary. She then finds 
that when she was ten months old her father gave her a pad 
of paper with a pencil and encouraged her to scribble by 
drawing for her crude pictures of the house dog King. She 
soon learned her lesson and whenever she saw her father 
with the pad she would point to it and say "la" which meant 
"draw." La was one of the few syllables she could utter 
at that age. Later when she could call King "Thim," she 
would often say to her father "La Thim," which meant 
"draw a picture of King." Still later "La" not only meant 
to write or draw but also became identified with color, un- 
doubtedly because some of the pencils she used were colored, 
so that when a multicolored ball was given her for the first 
time, she immediately designated it as "La ball," in contrast 
to the plain white ball with which she played for some time. 
Such symbols constantly recur in dreams and in other pro- 
ductions of unconscious mentation, but as we are usually 
ignorant of their origin they strike us as mysterious and 
foreign. 

So words uttered or written are nothing but symbols of 
actual activities. The alphabet originally consisted of 
symbols ; the addition of vowels and consonants was a much 
later development. In the Hebrew alphabet, for instance, 
which is a direct descendant of the Phoenician or first known 
alphabet, the alef represents graphically an ox and the beth 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FORGETTING 65 

a house. So, too, the Chinese ideographs and the hiero- 
glyphics of the ancient Egyptians are also symbolic repre- 
sentations of definite objects. 

We find also certain characteristic symbols among all 
nations. We, for instance, have the eagle as an emblem; 
the Romans, as you know, had the wolf; the English the 
lion, etc. It is also interesting to note that the guilds the 
world over had special symbols for the various trades, some 
of which still survive, the barber's pole and the pawn broker's 
sign, for instance. It is interesting to note also that the 
barber's pole was originally white spotted with red that 
signified blood, for in the old days the barber was a sort of 
half -doctor, performing such operations as blood letting and 
cupping, for instance ; and indeed, he is still regarded as such 
in Russia and some other European countries. I am sure 
you are all also aware of the symbolic significance of colors ; 
green, as you all know, signifies hope, red love, yellow jeal- 
ousy or cowardice. In the same way, too, there is not a word 
but that has a definite symbol, and it is instructive to note 
how the original symbol is in time distorted. Examples of 
this are legion. You may all know, I am sure, that the word 
person is derived from the Latin per sonna which means 
through a mask; originally an actor performing before a 
large audience used a megaphone to make his voice carry, 
but as it was somewhat ludicrous and unsesthetic to have 
him strut about the stage with a megaphone, it was found 
best to conceal it under a mask. Likewise, imbecile at 
present denotes a person who is mentally weak. Originally 
it signified merely physical debility or more particularly, a 
person walking on a cane. 

Now there are certain symbols that are ethnic; they re- 
semble certain things to such an extent that you find them 
wherever there is an unconscious mentation. Mythology 
and primitive religions particularly abound with them, for in 



66 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

this sphere of mental activity we find the human being in 
yet an infantile condition ; the difference between reality and 
fiction is not yet clearly marked. We note here., as in the 
dream, the preponderance of sex symbols. Indeed when one 
delves into the mainsprings of primitive religion, one finds 
that it is centered entirely around sex; it may be said that 
all our religions are intrinsically precipitates or extracts from 
the original Phallic worship. 1 In every Hindu temple even 
to-day, for instance, the altar is made up of the "yoni 
lingam" which is only a union of the male and female 
genitals on a pedestal surrounded by a snake which euphem- 
istically is a symbol of eternity. Those students who have 
delved deeply into the subject have pointed out, however, 
that the snake is really a symbol of the male genitals. 
Primitive man before he knew enough about the principles 
of biology could only think of one thing, that the genitals, 
because they produce life, were symbols of life ; and that is 
why they were carried in procession and worshiped. And 
what is unusually interesting is that you find this same 
symbolic expression even to-day. When we examine the 
language that we find in dreams, deliria, hallucinations, and 
delusions, we are at once impressed with that fact; our 
unconscious mentation is still swathed in the mystery of this 
time-old symbolism and it is altogether inscrutable to one 
who does not understand the language of the unconscious. 

There are many symbols that have lost their original mean- 
ing for us to-day, though they are still commonly used under 
different forms. It is noteworthy that the cross was orig- 
inally a Phallic symbol and like so many other symbols, was 
absorbed into Christianity from Paganism. St. Paul and 
other leaders of the Christian Church apparently deemed it 
best to allow these Pagan symbols, gradually giving them, 

1 Richard Payne Knight, "Two Essays on the Worship of 
Priapus," Privately Printed, London, 1865. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FORGETTING 67 

however, different connotations. As has been well pointed 
out, "the church has played a double part, a part of sheer 
antagonism, forcing heathen customs into the shade, into a 
more or less surreptitious and unprogressive life, and a part 
of adaptation, baptizing them into Christ, giving them a 
Christian name and interpretation and often modifying their 
form." 1 Thus Christmas, which was originally a Pagan 
holiday full of many primitive symbols, was transferred to 
Christianity and gradually acquired an altogether different 
significance; and that is why we may still see traces of the 
old celebration of the Roman kalends and Saturnalia in a 
great many of the ceremonies that go with Christmas, par- 
ticularly in Greek churches in the Orient. 

It perhaps may have occurred to you to inquire why the 
snake should be a symbol of the male genital. In the light 
of what I have already told you about the nature of thought 
processes, the reason is not far to seek. Though there is 
no resemblance between the snake and the male genital to 
the conscious eye, there is nevertheless a hidden, suggested 
similarity between them sufficient, at any rate, for the un- 
conscious to draw the analogy. 2 The story of Adam and Eve 
now takes on its real allegorical significance. Adam and 
Eve represent the infancy of humanity, when it was un- 
troubled, naked and free; when it was in paradise. Then 
comes the snake, the symbol of sex, and the situation takes 
on an altogether different aspect. In other words, the child 
in its infancy is in paradise, but as soon as it grows to the 
age of puberty, it is driven out of paradise and must now 
"live by the sweat of the brow." The story becomes per- 
fectly comprehensible to us in this light. 

Thus far, then, I have tried to make clear to you how the 

1 Ci. Miles, "Christmas." 

3 Dreams about snakes are very common and we must guard 
against the conclusion that the snake necessarily signifies the male 
genital in every case. 



68 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

unconscious mental activity consists essentially of compari- 
son, and how the results of this comparison by reason of 
their peculiar symbolic character are naturally not quite clear 
to the conscious mind. Consciously, for instance, you can 
tell a potato or an apple just at a glance, but in the uncon- 
scious or in mental confusion you may associate a host of 
other things with their more or less characteristic qualities 
of roundness, smoothness or color, before you will know 
that it is the one or the other. We find a similar state in 
clouding due to some organic brain disturbances, such as 
aphasia, in which certain fibers of the brain tissues are 
destroyed through a hemorrhage, for instance, and the brain 
as a result cannot function normally. 

In brief, a symbol is simply an analogy between impres- 
sions of the present and past and depending upon the in- 
dividual it is either simple or complex. 

Besides the form of forgetting already considered, there 
is another form which we find in what we call "concealing 
memories." The latter are really not lapses but distortions 
of memory. We encounter them when we begin to investi- 
gate how far back into life the memory can go. Ask people 
what they remember of their childhood and it is remarkable 

to see how little they can tell you ; indeed, some 
ceaiing- will say that they can recall nothing. You will 

be furthermore impressed with the comparative 
insignificance of the reproduced material, which is surpris- 
ingly trivial in character and seems to have little or nothing 
to do with the individual's life. The earliest recollections 
seem to preserve the unimportant and accidental, whereas, 
usually, though not universally, not a trace is found in the 
adult memory of the weighty and affective impressions of 
this early period. An individual recalled, for instance, that 
his father lifted him up to a bird cage ; one man told me some 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FORGETTING 69 

time ago that he remembers that his mother found a cent, — 
and nothing more. Examination shows that these indifferent 
childhood memories owe their existence to a process of dis- 
placement, by which we mean a deflection of a certain 
amount of energy to some extraneous material, to an idea 
or emotion to which it really does not belong. We observe 
the phenomenon daily. A man may have quarrelled with 
his wife, for instance, and now relieves himself of his ire 
by finding fault with his stenographer's spelling and dis- 
charging her. These memories represent in the reproduc- 
tion the substitute for other really significant impressions 
whose direct reproduction is hindered by some resistance. 
They owe their existence not to their own content, but to 
an associative relation of their content to another repressed 
thought and are therefore justly called "concealing mem- 
ories." They themselves are not important, but they conceal 
something. The individual whose father lifted him up to a 
bird cage did not remember the experience because of its 
importance, but because there was back of it something that 
was repressed and was now concealed under that memory. 

The content of the concealing memory seems to belong 
to the first years of childhood, but the thoughts it represents 
belong to a later period of the individual in question. 
Freud calls this form of displacement retroactive (acting 
backward) or regressive. The reverse relationship is more 
often found, that is, an indifferent impression of the most 
remote period becomes the concealing memory in conscious- 
ness which simply owes its existence to an association with 
an earlier experience, against whose direct reproduction 
there are resistances. These are called encroaching or inter- 
posing concealing memories. What most concerns the 
memory lies here, in point of time, beyond the concealing 
memory. They all show a remarkable resemblance to the 
forgetting of proper names and faulty recollections, as for 



70 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

instance, in the case of "Lapin," where I thought of "Appen- 
zeller." These new names or memories that encroach 
upon our consciousness when we try to recollect the 
original one are always in some way related to the real 
memories that are behind them. 

The question as to how far back into childhood our 
memories go has been investigated by many writers. They 
found that there is a wide individual variation, inasmuch as 
some trace their first reminiscences to the sixth month of 
life, while others can recall nothing before the sixth or even 
eighth year. Simple questioning is not enough, as every- 
day experience in psychoanalytic work demonstrates. The 
results should later be subjected to a study in which the 
person furnishing the information must participate, that is, 
the memories should be analyzed. For the infantile am- 
nesia, that is, the failure of memory for the first years of 
our lives should not be accepted as a matter of course. We 
should remember that a child of four years is capable of 
great intellectual accomplishments and complex emotional 
feelings. I have seen children of that age fall in love. Dr. 
Sanford Bell of Clarke University has found this amorous 
disposition to exist even at the age of two. It is really re- 
markable how little of these psychic processes have as a 
rule been retained in later years and yet we have every 
reason to believe that these forgotten childhood activities 
have not glided off without leaving a trace in the develop- 
ment of the person. We must remember that a person is 
always the product of the sum total of his impressions and 
that it is absolutely impossible for him to cut out a period, 
or block, as it were, of his life and go ahead. There is no 
break in the continuity of the psychic life. I have found 
that many individuals who declared they had not the 
faintest memory of their early childhood experiences, had 
really accomplished in that early period many significant 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FORGETTING 71 

things, which were gradually revealed in dreams or casual 
associations and which were later corroborated by the diary 
kept by the parent. Perhaps the most interesting case of 
this kind was that of a man whom I analyzed for six months, 
during which he brought to the surface many things which 
we felt were probably true. After five months he received 
a letter from his father in which the latter stated that he was 
sending him under separate cover a diary that the parent 
kept from the day of the patient's birth until the age of 
about thirty. We were very glad to receive it, and it has 
given me much pleasure, because it has confirmed practically 
everything concerning which we entertained any doubts. In 
some cases it is remarkable how special incidents are cor- 
roborated. A man whom I am treating at present visited the 
nurse whom he had from the age of one and a half to eight. 
She related experiences of his early childhood that he never 
knew anything about, and here, too, her information cor- 
roborated everything that I assumed on a theoretical basis. 

As I pointed out, children take up impressions from the 
very beginning of their existence. As time goes on, Locke's 
"tabula rasa" becomes more and more filled with them, and 
like a book, the older the individual, the more voluminous it 
is. These traces of early life always remain and because 
they are subjected to repression, they come to the surface 
more or less disguised and incomplete; they are falsified or 
displaced in point of time and place. Motives may be dis- 
covered, however, which explain these disfigurements and we 
find that these memory lapses are not the result of a mere un- 
reliable memory. Powerful forces from a later period have 
molded the memory capacity of our infantile experiences, 
and it is probably due to these same forces that the under- 
standing of our childhood is generally so very strange to us. 

A case of "concealing memories" reported by Professor 
Freud is that of a young man who declared that he remem- 



72 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

bered seeing himself standing by the side of his aunt and 
asking her the difference between the letter m and the letter n. 
There was no reason why he should remember this par- 
ticular experience, except in that it concealed something else 
vastly more significant and important. The thoughts repre- 
sented by the memory concerned itself with his wish later 
in life to know the difference between a boy and a girl ; he 
wanted his aunt to tell him the difference, but he dared not 
broach the subject. Later on, however, he found that the 
difference was very similar to that between the letter m and n ; 
one has one stroke more than the other. 

One of my patients informed me once that his memory 
went back to the time of his baptism, when he was about a 
week old. He maintained that he distinctly remembered the 
house and the stairway leading up to the first floor where he 
was supposed to have been baptized. He particularly re- 
called a lamp standing at the foot of the stairs and the 
minister who performed the baptism, a tall man in a black 
frock coat. He remembered vividly how his head was 
totally submerged in a basin of water. I was naturally 
skeptical and explained to him that I thought it was a con- 
cealing memory which probably hid something else of a much 
later date. He then informed me that he had entertained 
this memory for many years, but that when he imparted it to 
his mother a few years ago she laughed, declaring that there 
was no truth in it, that in the first place, he was not born 
in this particular house, but that he had merely lived there 
from the age of four to six, that she could not recall this 
particular lamp, that the minister who really baptized him 
was not tall, and what was more, that the baby's head is not 
submerged in a basin of water during baptism. Notwith- 
standing his mother's absolute denial, the patient continued 
to entertain this memory; he strongly felt that it was true 
despite all facts to the contrary. I called his attention to the 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FORGETTING 73 

fact that his mother had no motive for denying it and that 
so far as I know, it would be impossible to retain anything 
from so early an age. We then proceeded to analyze it. 
He stated that the most vivid element in the memory was 
the lamp and so I asked him to concentrate his attention on 
it and give me his associations. He could see the lamp at 
the foot of the stairs, the stairway, and the room on the first 
floor. He then recalled that at the age of about five years 
he was standing one afternoon in that room watching a 
Swedish servant who was either on a high chair or a step- 
ladder cleaning the chandelier. He became very inquisitive 
sexually and made a great effort to look under her clothes. 
She noticed it and gave him a very strong rebuke. He then 
recalled that a few years later he watched through a keyhole 
to see his mother dress, and somehow she caught him and 
punished him very severely for it. He was very much 
humiliated, for she took him downstairs to the dining room 
and told his father and brother what he had done. At about 
the same age, probably a little before this episode with his 
mother, he was on the roof one evening and spied a woman 
undressing in a house across the street. In his great ex- 
citement, he ran down to call his brother, but when he re- 
turned the woman had already slipped a nightgown on and 
was now pulling down the shades. He told me that for 
years he regretted that he went to call his brother. He kept 
on reproducing more scenes, all of which dealt with 
frustrated sexual looking. 

We must remember that sexual curiosity is a very com' 
mon, indeed, I may say, a universal mechanism in all 
children who are brought up as the average parents bring 
them up to-day, without answering their questions, impart- 
ing to them nothing of the vital knowledge for which they 
crave. Children perpetually ask questions, and if these are 
not answered, they develop a strong inquisitiveness for look- 



74 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

ing, particularly in homes where the mother is prudish and 
takes every opportunity to conceal and thus impress upon 
the child's sensitive mind that there is something to be hid- 
den. If it is for nothing other than the exercising of the 
faculties of intellect, the child possesses here already suffi- 
cient material to become inquisitive. But consider also the 
presence of the biological factor ; nature has endowed every 
human being with the desire to know about sex because the 
latter is a tremendously important problem in life. The 
lamp, therefore, represented in the psychic life of this 
patient a contrast association of darkness which stood in the 
way of his sexual inquisitiveness. That is why the lamp 
element was so accentuated in his memory. 

The question now presents itself, "Why did he remember 
the fact of his baptism?" This young man is a good 
Christian, his parents are Christians, but his paternal 
grandfather was a Jew. He himself shows no traces of 
Semitism; the only thing he retains from his grandfather 
is the name. It is a German name which is often mistaken 
for a Jewish one, and for this reason, it has given him con- 
siderable trouble. He was refused, for instance, admission 
to a certain school because of his name. At college it was 
suspected that he was Jewish and on that account he failed 
to be elected to a fraternity that admitted only Gentiles. 
The concealing memory of his baptism is thus a compen- 
sation for his suspected Judaism and that is why it retained 
its vividness, his mother's denial to the contrary. He had 
to be assured that he was baptized and therefore was a 
Christian. On the whole, the memory represents a religious 
scene in order to hide an immoral scene of marked affective 
content. At the age of puberty there was a complete re- 
pression of all sexual elements, and he became a model boy 
in every way. He is now over thirty-six years old and has 
never had any kind of relations with the opposite sex. He 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FORGETTING 75 

is a shy, seclusive, reserved personality and is remarkably 
ignorant of everything sexual. This is only a reaction to his 
early immorality, and was affected by the various shocks or 
set-backs he sustained in his effort to adjust himself to his 
adult sexuality. Had his mother realized at the time she 
caught him peeping that his inquisitiveness was only an ex- 
pression of his budding sexuality and had she explained to 
him in a frank, sympathetic way that it was not nice for a 
little boy to do this or that, he would probably have been able 
like his brother to adjust himself normally, to find a mate, 
and marry. But as it is, his parents regretted to the day of 
their death that they could not see him married. 

Thus what we generally look upon as forgetting is not 
that at all ; certain things are merely pushed into the uncon- 
sciousness, because of something unpleasant associated with 
them; we are not aware of them consciously and so we 
naturally presume we have forgotten them. We may crowd 
out something from consciousness, but we never forget it; 
it always remains in the unconscious. What profound truth 
in the observation of an old Greek philosopher who, when 
called upon to teach one the art of remembering replied: 
"Rather teach me the art of forgetting!" 



CHAPTER IV 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERY-DAY LIFE 

We do not have to go far to be convinced how significant 
a role the unconscious plays in life. The proof is at our 
door. All the 'Tittle" mistakes that we all are constantly 
making, lapses in talking, writing, etc., our so called for- 
getting and absent-mindedness show very definitely to what 
a surprising extent our thoughts and actions are influenced 
by the unconscious. If we have our eyes open, examples of 
such unconscious manifestations may be found on all sides. 
I shall cite some to you out of a vast number that have come 
to my attention from time to time, and I hope they will 
prove sufficiently interesting to stimulate you to observation 
in your own daily lives. 

Mr. L., a newspaper man, once assured me that he could 
disprove Freud's theory of forgetting with very little effort. 
He proceeded at once to tell me that he had oc- 
ting: casion to write to his friend living in Boston, and 

upon addressing the letter he found he forgot his 
last name, and that it was only after a considerable amount 
of thought that he could recall that it was Murphy. He con- 
tinued to declare quite warmly that it was strange and sur- 
prising that he should thus forget the name of a friend, 
formerly his school mate and chum, whom he could not 
associate with absolutely any disagreeable or painful ex- 
perience. We proceeded to analyze the case. I asked him 
to tell me something about his friend whom he designated 
as Jack. He associated his name with Murphy of Tammany 

76 



PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERY-DAY LIFE 77 

Hall and though the former was a Republican he felt that 
that was no reason why he should dislike the name Murphy. 
After associating for a little while, he ended by saying: 
"You see, then, doctor, there is absolutely nothing disagree- 
able connected with the name." But I urged him to con- 
tinue his associations, and finally there came to his mind 
another Murphy who played an altogether different part in 
his life from that of his friend. The moment he uttered his 
name, I could see a marked change in his facial expression 
and voice; he became flushed with anger. This man de- 
ceived him and still owed him money, and L. hated him. 
That was sufficient to explain his temporary forgetting. 
He never had occasion to write to his own friend before, he 
always knew and thought of him as Jack and never as- 
sociated him with Murphy; besides, his friend had no 
parents so that he had no opportunity to use his name even 
under other circumstances. > L We must remember that we 
think of a person in terms of the name that we call him by. 
On the other hand, there was the name Murphy which was 
associated in his mind with something distinctly painful, and 
it was therefore natural that when he came to write to his 
friend for the first time, he could not associate the disagree- 
able element in his repression with his name. That was why 
he was compelled to stop and recall it; he simply refused to 
give his friend a name that was connected in his mind with 
the painful and disagreeable. 

We find the same mechanism in such episodes as this: 
A woman meets a friend of hers who married recently and 
instead of addressing her Mrs. Smith, calls her by her 
maiden name. When you investigate the mistake you discover 
that she has absolutely no respect for Mrs. Smith's husband, 
and what is more, she did not want her to marry him from 
the very beginning. We see this same thing when a woman 
refuses to use her husband's name. There is no other reason 



78 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

than that of expediency why a woman should drop her own 
name ; the practice of adopting the husband's name was in- 
augurated originally mostly for the sake of convenience; it 
eliminated various unnecessary complications. And as a 
matter of fact, there are still primitive tribes that continue 
the surname of the mother right through the family line. 
But if it is customary for a married woman to take her 
husband's name, we may safely say that it augurs little 
good if she persists in holding on to her own maiden one; 
it is particularly significant if she reverts to her own name, 
after having been accustomed to use that of her husband 
with whom she has lived for quite some time. A case like 
this was reported to me a few years ago in which a woman 
wrote a letter and instead of her marriage name signed her 
maiden one. I remarked then that it was a bad omen, and I 
know now that she is separated from her husband. It is a 
different matter when a married woman retains her maiden 
name because of some distinction or accomplishment to 
which she properly can lay claim. Here the purpose is to 
maintain whatever significance her special position may have, 
distinct and separate from her relations as wife. Among 
professional women, accordingly, it is common to retain the 
maiden name, and as far as I know, the husband does not 
seem to have any objection to it at all. We are always lay- 
ing emphasis on the importance of individual cases ; but we 
may safely say that as a rule when a married woman uses 
her maiden name, it means that in the unconscious she does 
not wish to consider herself married. 

It is interesting to observe a further illustration of this 
principle in the substitution of another person's name for 
one's own. A few years ago I received a letter from a 
minister in Oklahoma, asking me to send him a list of books 
for reading along Freudian lines. The letter was type- 
written and there was at the bottom his name in hand- 



PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERY-DAY LIFE 79 

writing, C. A. Brill. His real name was Beard and there 
was the irresistible conclusion that he signed my name be- 
cause he considered me an authority on the subject, and 
unconsciously identified himself with me; he wished, one 
might say, to know as much about psychoanalysis as I did. 
When I related this incident to my class here, it was sug- 
gested that the letter may have been signed by the minister's 
stenographer, whereupon one of the students assured me 
that if I showed her the letter she would be able to verify 
the minister's signature, for she knew his handwriting very 
well. She came from the same state and knew him per- 
sonally; and what was more, it was upon her suggestion 
that he wrote the letter to me. When she glanced at the 
letter she immediately recognized his signature. And so 
my conclusion was completely corroborated. 

Now it was essentially no pleasant or agreeable motive that 
prompted him to make that error ; there was the unconscious 
wish to eliminate what seemed to him a shortcoming, a con- 
dition of ignorance in relation to a subject which he con- 
sciously desired to know and understand. We find this 
same condition among neurotics. In treating them we often 
learn that they cannot pronounce certain words, particularly 
certain names. This whole motive of names plays a most 
fascinating part in mythology; discover the name in some 
fairy-stories and there is the greatest misfortune. You may 
very often find among neurotics that the only reason why 
they have difficulty in pronouncing and therefore stammer 
over some particular word or name is because there is some- 
thing painful and disagreeable connected with it. I am 
going to illustrate this presently by a definite case of stam- 
mering. 

By way of digression, perhaps, let us say at this point 
that it has been recognized by most students and observers 
that most cases of stammering are not due to organic con- 



80 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

ditions, that indeed very few cases may be traced to some 
disturbance in the throat or vocal organs. It is essentially 
a neurotic disturbance that usually comes on at an early 
period in a nervous type of individual and then gradually 
assumes the character of a habit, in which form it continues 
in the future. In studying an abnormal condition, it is 
highly instructive to examine its normal counterpart. When 
do you stammer yourself? It is a common observation that 
upon being asked your age, you will never answer im- 
mediately. Some among us will even anticipate the next 
question and hasten to answer it. I have heard of a woman 
who was asked how old she was and after stammering for a 
while, replied quite blandly, "In Boston." She did not wish 
to reply, and at once turned her attention to the expected 
question as to her place of birth. But we show no degree 
of hesitation when we are called upon to respond to a ques- 
tion to which we have no resistance. When you ask a 
friend for a loan of ten dollars and he at once says, "Alright, 
have it," then he really wishes to give it to you; but if he 
pauses and says, "Now, let me think," you may be certain 
that he does not want to lend it. Invite a friend to dinner 
and if he stammers and stutters a reply, he is not anxious 
to go; there is a psychic impediment somewhere. 

When we study speech disturbances we find that they have 
the same origin, they may be ultimately reduced to some 
very simple inhibition begun at a very early age. The child, 
for instance, may have done something that it knows it will 
be punished for; let us say it has stolen jam or candy. 
When questioned it will hesitate to speak but on being 
compelled to confess it will stammer on the significant 
word. In time this particular word or expression con- 
nected with the unpleasant episode gradually becomes gen- 
eralized and the resulting condition remains more or less 
fixed. Now I do not wish that you get the impression that 



PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERY-DAY LIFE 81 

stammering is a simple condition that may be remedied by 
merely probing its beginnings in the individual's psychic life ; 
it is one of the hardest neuroses to cure and only few of 
those who receive treatment are ultimately in any real sense 
cured. But to get more or less successful results at all, one 
should combine psychoanalysis with vocal training, and con- 
tinue the treatment for a long time. All my successful cases 
have been under my care at least a year, sometimes longer. 
This, of course, applies to those who began to stammer early 
in life, to the so-called congenital cases, though there are 
very few cases that I have seen in which the history reveals 
the condition from the very beginning. Patients of this 
type are difficult to cure, and every so-called remedy can be 
of only temporary benefit to them. 

A very intelligent stammerer, for instance, came to me for 
treatment. He was a man of means and he had tried all 
sorts of methods ; some of them were indeed very ludicrous. 
One man sold him some sort of appliance that the former 
maintained was sure to cure him, but it was merely a belt 
which the patient had to wear so tight around the waist 
that every time he uttered a word, there was no mistaking 
that he had it on. That distracted him, of course, and he 
talked fairly well for a while. But the remedy soon lost its 
magic potency; it is hard to say whether the belt stretched 
or his waist became thinner, but he soon began to stammer 
again. The sum and substance of the usual treatment that 
patients of this kind get at the various schools, such as 
stamping with the foot or speaking in a certain fluctuated 
way, consists entirely of this distraction principle ; there is no 
doubt but what it helps them a little, but that of and by 
itself will not make for permanent results; the psychic 
factors in the case must always be dealt with. 

Of course there are some patients who never stutter at all 
until they merge into a neurosis ; these can be cured through 



82 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

analysis ; but they can derive no permanent help from mere 
training or distraction. The case of a man of this type came 
to my attention some years ago. He stuttered in different 
ways, with the arms, body and mouth. He could not touch a 
glass of beer or a plate of soup without a fatal result: his 
hand would turn down and the contents would be spilled. 
Of ice cream he could have as much as his heart desired, 
but for some mysterious reason, beer and soup were ab- 
solutely tabooed. He also stammered badly, and as his 
position demanded much telephone conversation, he was 
compelled to give it up. I treated him and he did very well ; 
in the course of time he was able to drink all of soup and 
beer he wished, much to his great delight. But I could not 
make any headway with his stuttering and it finally occurred 
to me that there must be something definite connected with 
it. This was his history: He lived a sort of common law life 
with a woman for whom he sustained an apartment, while 
he stayed with his mother who was a religious Catholic. He 
introduced her to a friend of his with whom she presently 
fell in love and who offered to marry her. She consented 
and left her former friend. It was a terrible blow to the 
patient for he had really intended to marry her himself; 
and it was following this misfortune that he suffered his 
nervous breakdown. It occurred to me that his condition 
may perhaps be connected directly or indirectly with this 
experience. When I began to investigate the matter, I 
learned that he began to stutter with the sound of "k" or in 
other words with the sound of "ck" ; but as "c" has two 
sounds, his condition soon spread to "s" and then to all 
words beginning with "k," regardless of whether it was 
pronounced or not, as for instance in such a word as "knife;" 
and so finally he seemed to stammer almost on every letter. 
I had noticed that he always referred to the particular 
woman in question as "that woman" and I decided to in- 



PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERY-DAY LIFE 83 

vestigate the matter. But the moment I asked him what 
her name was he grew visibly affected, and declared ex- 
citedly that he could not tell me. I assured him that I asked 
the question out of no mere curiosity, but for a very definite 
and important reason. When he refused to give me the 
name, I closed the matter by stating that I could then do 
nothing for him under the circumstances, for there is a 
tacit understanding between me and my patients that they 
are to hold nothing back from me, that they are to be an 
open book to me, as it were. He was quite willing to leave 
me, particularly since he felt he was much better anyway. 
But in a few weeks he grew worse and returned to me. He 
then explained that in his anger he actually had vowed 
never to utter the woman's name again. I quieted him and 
assured him that I would take the sin upon my own 
shoulders. He finally was willing to tell her name if I 
promised him that I would not write it down. I readily 
consented and pointed out to him that, in my notes, I desig- 
nated her as Miss W. Thus I finally succeeded in persuading 
him to disclose to me her name. It was Keith. I was now 
quite convinced why he stuttered; it was the sound of "k" 
which was under repression that was the significant factor in 
the origin of his condition. I concluded at once that if my 
theory was correct, he would now necessarily stutter on every 
word beginning with "w," for as I said, I substituted that 
letter for the "k" in the woman's name, and impressed it upon 
his mind when I showed him the substitution in my notes. 
About a week later he told me that he was otherwise ap- 
preciably better but that his speech impediment was growing 
worse; he proceeded to state that now he was not able to 
pronounce even his brother's name ; and upon inquiring what 
it was, he stammered out the name "W-W-W- William." 
To be sure, the moment it became intimately connected in his 
mind with the name of Keith in the substitutive relation 



84 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

noted, it was at once tabooed and repressed. After I ex- 
plained to him the deeper meaning of these psychic processes 
he gradually began to improve in his speech and finally re- 
covered. 

To return to the psychopathology of forgetting names. 
Here is an interesting lapse of memory that was brought to 
my attention by one of my patients. She told me she was 
trying to think of a name of a small town near White 
Plains and that the first name that came to her mind was 
"Prudence." She knew that was not the name of the place, 
but after thinking for a long time she finally found it; it 
was "Purchase." Analysis revealed that she was a woman 
who always had differences with her husband about her 
expenses. One of her great interests in life was to purchase 
things and she had to try very hard to live within her means, 
for her husband was often unable to pay all the bills that she 
ran up. Thus the moment she wanted to think of the name 
"Purchase," there at once came to her consciousness a re- 
pressed and painful element followed directly by the word 
"Prudence" denoting, to be sure, a good New England virtue 
which teaches one to live frugally. 

Here is another case related to me by a friend of mine. 
He recently met a young lady in a cafe with whom he was 
evidently very much impressed ; she was the type of woman 
that he liked. He engaged in conversation with her and 
when she left, they exchanged names. To her query 
whether he will remember her name, he answered pleasantly 
and positively : "Why, of course I will !" Her name hap- 
pened to be "Raub." In speaking of her the next day to 
his intimate friend, he referred to her quite unconsciously 
as Miss Braun. When his friend betrayed utter ignorance 
as to whom he meant, he paused, thought a while and soon 
saw his mistake. As you see, "Braun" contains all the 
letters of "Raub" and when I asked him who this "Braun" 



PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERY-DAY LIFE 85 

was, he immediately told me of an important and interesting 
character in the third volume of "J ean Christophe," who 
made a powerful emotional appeal to him and was more or 
less his ideal type of woman physically. Thus he uncon- 
sciously identified Miss "Raub" with this particular woman. 
But why should he change her name? In the first place, 
it did not appeal to him; it suggests in German the 
thought of stealing or plunder. But what is of greater 
significance, he is a literary man and identified himself 
with Romain Rolland as he has done on previous occa- 
sions with other authors. Like Jean Christophe who had 
that powerful love affair with Mrs. Braun, he too would 
have an amour with this Miss "Raub" and straightway the 
latter 's name was changed. The whole mentation was 
absolutely unconscious. The significant element to observe 
here is the strong identification which played, also, so in- 
teresting a part in the case of the minister who identified 
himself with "Brill." 

People very often take exception to this psychology and I 
have had many interesting experiences with skeptics. I once 
read a paper at the Academy of Medicine and there was a 
well-known professor of academic psychology present who 
took the opportunity to call me to account for the theory of 
forgetting of names. He declared that while reading a 
paper of mine on this subject it occurred to him that there 
was a stenographer in his college whose name he could never 
remember, and this, despite the fact that she has been there 
for a number of years, and that he has occasion to talk to 
her very often. And then he went on to state that it was 
not at all a peculiar name, that it was . . . and here he 
stopped, utterly unable to recall it. The audience smiled and 
then he said: "You see I have the bad habit of forgetting 
proper names. But I now have a mnemonic for this name, it 
is 'Watertown.' " He then stated that to test our theory he 



86 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

resorted to the continuous association method a la Freud and 
there came to his mind first, Waddling, which he at once 
recognized as incorrect; the next associations were: "You 
are making a pun, — she is indeed far from Waddling." 
Here he interpolated the little remark that he always had the 
bad habit of making puns of persons' names, but, he con- 
tinued, he was glad to say that he was gradually growing out 
of it. Then he thought of "Waddington" and after giving 
about ten associations, he said: "You see from my 
associations that there is nothing painful or disagreeable 
connected with this name." When my turn came to answer, 
I first made it clear that he did not associate long enough, 
for it often takes us hours to analyze a name. Then 
I asked his permission to take advantage of some remarks 
that he made and to make some impromptu analysis. In 
the first place, he informed us that he has the bad habit of 
forgetting all proper names. Though it is well known that 
we do not, as a rule, remember all names heard, nevertheless, 
when we meet some striking or important personality with 
whom we are impressed we almost invariably remember his 
name. Hence when a person asserts that he forgets all 
names, the only conclusion is that he finds no one in the 
world of sufficient importance to play a role in his life. 
This, I continued, was confirmed by the professor's remark 
that he had the bad habit of making puns of proper names, 
for here again we do this only with names of people for 
whom we have little regard. It is commonly observed 
among young boys and very intimate adults. Nevertheless 
he showed good psychological insight as he made an effort 
to overcome it, realizing that it was wrong. I am glad to 
say that the professor did not take my explanation amiss. 

We find also the element of the unpleasant and disagree- 
able at the root of all deliberate changing of names. Note 
some instances. There was a business firm in New York 



PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERY-DAY LIFE 87 

that was called "Yvel Jewelry Co." After a little thought, 
I realized that as its place of business was on Broadway, 
"Yvel" was preferable to "Levy." And so, too, when you 
see the name Honce and are quite sure that it is not Irish 
or Scandinavian, reflect a little and you will find that it is 
Cohen. There was a club here in the city that went under 
the peculiar denomination of the "Sesrun;" it used to baffle 
me before I became a Freudian ; now I read it backward and 
know that it is the "Nurses' " club. It is said that the 
Damrosch family in New York was originally "Rothkopf," 
red-head, but as the latter was not quite euphonious, 
it was translated into original classical Hebrew. During 
the World War particularly, it was quite a common thing 
to change foreign names and I consider such a practice 
advisable and justified. It is undoubtedly highly desirable 
that we enter as far as possible into complete harmony with 
our environment, and I heartily disagree with the famous 
judge who did not approve of changing the name Beneditsky 
to Benedict, for instance. It seems to me that he showed a 
distinct lack of psychological insight. It is quite remarkable 
to observe that after going through this Americanization 
process the new name still shows its old origin. We have 
Hearst for Hirsch, Redstone for Rothstein, etc. The 
motive in changing the name is undoubtedly to eradicate the 
painful or disagreeable element that has become attached to 
it. 

It is interesting to note that among primitive people, 
names are often changed on religious grounds. In one of 
Ibanez's short stories, the author refers to the practice, com- 
mon among Jews, of changing a sick child's name ; the little 
girl's name in the story is changed from Bona Hora to Luna ; 
the thought is that the angel of death will thus be unable to 
find it. As you see, it is the same mechanism; there is 



88 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

fundamentally something painful and disagreeable connected 
with the name. 

I have recently learned from a work by Capt. Bodeson 
that the same practice is found also among some tribes in 
Indo-China. When a child is born among some of the 
savages in Indo-China that appears to be weak and sickly, 
they call it by some such name as "Bat," "Distress" or 
"Agony;" if it is fair and pudgy they may call it "Peace" 
or "Gold" or "Flower." Whenever a child outlived one 
or the other attribute they changed the name accordingly. 
That is why historians sometimes find in documentary evi- 
dence names like Typhus I., Scarlet II., Cholera I. and the 
like. In brief, primitive people in history confirm our 
views by evincing the same mechanism underlying the giving 
and changing of names such as we find to-day in the 
examples that we have already noted. 

I have given you some illustrations of how the unconscious 
mental activity manifests itself in the forgetting of names. 
There are also other mistakes that we commonly make in 
reading, writing and talking of no less interesting character, 
and it may perhaps be advisable to dwell on them for a little 
while so that you may thus get a little more insight into the 
deeper significance of these unconscious psychic manifesta- 
tions. 

One of my patients related to me the following experience: 
PLe knew a young lady from his earliest childhood and was 
Lapses deeply in love with her. He never failed to in- 

aeadingr vite her, together with her mother, to all his 
writing college affairs. When he graduated, he took up 
engineering at Cornell and upon completing his course of 
studies, he naturally invited them to the commencement 
exercises. He wrote a very warm letter in which he stated, 
that he was very sorry that his fraternity had no chapter 



PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERY-DAY LIFE 89 

house in Cornell and that he was therefore compelled to 
provide outside quarters for them. He continued Sts fol- 
lows: "I am sorry that I cannot offer you the luxurious 
surroundings of a fraternity home, but I have eng.i r ed rooms 
at a hotel for you." But instead of that he wrote: "I am 
sorry that I cannot offer you the luxurious surroundings of. 
a maternity home." Without being aware ( f the error, h * 
mailed the letter. The girl's mother was highly indignant 
over this seemingly brazen directness, and at once returned 
it. He could not understand what occurred, but with the 
help of his room-mate, to whom he showed the letter, the 
mistake was quickly discovered. He then simply addressed 
a little note to the girl in which he e vpressed his hope that 
she did not take the matter in any ill spirit, but that she re- 
garded it as merely a slip on his part. At any rate, mother 
and daughter came to the commencement. He asked me to 
tell him why he made the mistake and why the mother was 
so wrought-up over it. What was uppermost on his mind 
at the time of the incident was the fact that he was nearing 
the goal of his ambition, i.e., that he would soon be inde- 
pendent as an engineer and thus be in a position to marry. 
When he wrote maternity, he unconsciously expressed his 
deep regret that he was, as yet, not able to enter upon matri- 
mony. The question why the mother reacted toward the 
letter in the manner she did was, of course, a little more 
difficult to explain. Though she realized very well that it 
was essentially an error on his part, she nevertheless could 
not ignore it for the simple reason that her mind was in a 
state of what we may designate, "complex readiness," or as 
it is called by Bleuler "complex Bereifschaft." It was in- 
cumbent on her to appear innocent and deeply touched, 
though she knew only too well what the young man meant. 
But in this way she only betrayed herself the more. That 
is how some apparently well-meaning people betray their 



90 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

real state of feeling; they disclose their vulnerable point in 
their eagerness to conceal it. 

I may perhaps make this a little clearer to you by an il- 
lustration. One of my patients was having an affair with 
a. woman of questionable character and I urged him to drop 
it; I maintained with good reason that she was not faithful 
to him. He was loath, however, to do so, but intimated that 
he thought I was right and that if he himself had proof of 
it, he would have nothing more to do with her. One eve- 
ning while they were both passing a certain hotel in New 
York, she paused and asked him to tell her what sort of place 
it was. He felt embarrassed, for it was difficult for him to 
answer the question, as it was distinctly a place of ill-repute. 
When he asked me to tell him its significance, I stated that, 
in all probability, she knows all about the hotel and frequents 
it herself and that in order to throw him off his guard she 
was constrained to inquire about it so that she may thus 
appear entirely ignorant on the matter. He was skeptical 
and replied dryly: "That's all theory." A few weeks later 
he had an appointment with her in the lobby of a New York 
hotel; after waiting for her a while, he was paged and in- 
formed that she could not meet him, as she had company at 
home whom she could leave under no circumstances. He 
was disappointed. It was raining and dreary, and feeling 
depressed he drifted into that same hotel about which she 
questioned him. He took a few drinks, and as he was 
standing there at the bar, chatting with the bar-tender, he 
presently saw the elevator descending and who, to his great 
surprise, should step out of it but his young lady and another 
man. That, of course, closed the whole affair. So, as you 
see, she had a complex readiness, and though there was not 
the faintest possibility of his suspecting her when they passed 
the hotel, she neverthless suspected herself, and perforce, in- 



PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERY-DAY LIFE 91 

directly and unwittingly expressed the suspicion that was 
on her mind. 

Here is a mistake in talking related to me by one of my 
patients. She was present at an evening dance that con- 
tinued until about eleven p.m., when everybody, of course, 
expected a more or less substantial repast. Instead, just 
sandwiches and lemonade were served, and the disappoint- 
ment was as keen as it was general. It was at the time that 
Mr. Roosevelt was running for president; the guests were 
discussing politics with the host, when one of them, an 
ardent admirer of the Colonel, wished to say : "There is one 
fine thing about Teddy, he always gives you a square deal." 
Instead of that, he said: "There is one fine thing about 
Teddy, he always gives you a square meal." All were em- 
barrassed but understood each other quite well. 

Slips of this nature occur all the time. I was speaking 
once to a French patient, who had the annoying habit of 
wandering from the subject, meandering, then stopping and 
wasting a considerable amount of time. On one occasion I 
wanted to tell her to "go on," "avant," but instead I said, 
"good-by," "au revoir." 

I have found myself making similar mistakes at various 
times. One of my patients who was very paranoid, really 
insane, consulted me about her condition and I advised her 
to go voluntarily into a hospital. She was quite willing to do 
so, but claimed that she had some complication that made 
such a step rather difficult. She had an apartment with some 
friends who would not let her go. I became impatient and 
said to her: "You are perfectly incompetent to take care 
of your own affair." I wanted to say "competent/' 

Another one of my patients, a young lady, had a bad 
habit of repeatedly using her powder puff in my office. I 
got tired of it in time and remarked that it must be some 
sort of symbolic action on her part. One day she came and 



92 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

I noticed that she did not have her powder puff with her; 
she seemed to be rather dull and listless, and I remarked: 
"You don't seem to have brought along your mental 
powder." I meant to say, "your mental power/' I really 
thought she could do so very much better with the aid of her 
powder puff. 

Another young lady whom I treated was unusually liberal 
and lavish in the use of cosmetics. I had advised her to drop 
a certain young man; following her meeting with him she 
came for a consultation. I was naturally very much in- 
terested to know what had occurred, and I asked at once: 
"How did you make up?" I meant to ask: "How did you 
make out?" 

I advised a woman against an amour she carried on with 
a certain man who lived in Baltimore. She promised me that 
she would never see him again. One day she told me that she 
was planning a little trip to Washington, and in the course 
of the conversation remarked, "I am going to do this, if my 
pleasant plan is successful." She wanted to say "present" 
plan. "You are anticipating very great pleasure in seeing 
again Mr. S." I added. "Oh, well, Doctor, you know I am 
sick and tired of not seeing him," she replied. 

I once wrote a prescription for an elderly lady. My re- 
marks were: "I am giving you thirty pills; I want you to 
take one three times a day after meals." Upon which she 
said, "Doctor, don't give me big bills, because I can't swallow 
them." Thereupon I asked her in a matter of fact way 
whether she thought I was overcharging her. "Oh, yes, 
Doctor, I really meant to talk to you about it ; I can't afford 
to come to you," she replied. Of course she had no idea 
why I put the question, and had I not taken her mistake as 
an indication of her dissatisfaction with my charges, she 
probably would have left me. 

A woman was given a telephone number by her friend 



PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERY-DAY LIFE 93 

who suggested that she write it down lest she forget it. "Oh, 
no, I do not have to write it down, it is simple, number 1740; 
I can easily remember it by saying, seventeen which I am 
sorry I'm not, and forty which I regret very much I am." 
She nevertheless made sure and jotted it down. The next 
time she had occasion to call up her friend, she asked her 
maid to get the number for her, but when she was connected 
she found that she did not have the right person. She was 
cross and fretful, but it was soon discovered that instead of 
1740 she gave the number 1704. Here, as you see, her mis- 
take revealed her aversion for the number forty, and, on that 
account, therefore, she forgot it. 

Mr. J. wished to call 648 Convent, but instead, called 648 
Convict. The telephone operator, of course, insisted that 
he had the wrong exchange. He was calling up one of the 
commissioners of the state prison, in regard to a convict. 

A friend of mine, a writer, in speaking about a certain 
book he was reading, observed: "This is the best book I 
have ever written." He wished to say: "This is the best 
book that I have ever read." The inference is that it was 
such an excellent book that he wished to be the author of it. 

A woman who reproached herself for various sexual 
transgressions asked me once whether I had seen a play 
called the "Everlasting Madonna?" I told her that as far 
as I knew there was no such play on the stage at that time. 
"You mean, perhaps, 'The Eternal Magdalene/ " I said. 
She saw her mistake at once. 

A pregnant woman came into a department store and 
wished to ask for a linen called "fruit of the loom." In- 
stead, she asked for "fruit of the womb." 

Here is an interesting lapse of memory related to me by a 
friend: "During the trouble with the St. Louis and San 
Francisco R. R., the bonds of the company fell in value, 
and as I had a few of them I was very much disturbed. 



94 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

When I expressed my fears to an acquaintance, he explained 
to me that I had no reason to worry about the 4% bonds but 
that the 5% ones were now hardly worth half their value. 
As I did not know which I had, I immediately hastened to 
the safe deposit vault to find out. I requested the clerk to 
open the outer locker of box 170 in which I kept my bonds 
and other valuable papers. When he unlocked it, I in- 
serted my own key into the box, but try as I would, I could 
not open it ; the key did not seem to fit. I called the clerk, 
and after a number of unsuccessful attempts, he asked me 
whether I was sure that my box number was 170. I was 
very positive that the number was correct and was even 
angry with him for questioning me, for I had the box for the 
last ten years. I suggested that the key was perhaps bent ; 
and he tried it with the duplicate key, but with no success. 
He finally decided to verify the number in the records of the 
bank, and what was my surprise when he came back and told 
me that it was 175 and not 170 !" As you see, he was afraid 
that his bonds were the 5% issue; and as he had now good 
reason to dislike the number five, he immediately pushed it 
into the unconscious. 

The following is a striking example of lapse in talking 
that came to my attention recently: A very methodical 
gentleman who was wont to make many Sunday afternoon 
calls was quite assiduously attending to this pleasant function 
one Sunday, when, as he was about to go home, he suddenly 
recalled a lady friend, living not far from his own house, and 
in his accustomed punctiliousness, he decided to pay her 
his last visit. He expected to stay a few minutes, when to 
his great dismay, the young lady, knowing quite well that he 
was of a musical temperament, declared very enthusiastic- 
ally: "I must play something for you." Without re- 
monstrance, she at once made for the piano and began to play. 
She played and played to the great despair of the gentleman 



PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERY-DAY LIFE 95 

who was very anxious to get home to dress for dinner, for 
one thing, and then, too, because he suffered from extreme 
discomfort of a tense bladder. Finally, to his great relief, 
the young lady stopped playing, remarking quite proudly: 
"You know it took me a couple of weeks to memorize this." 
In his wonted urbanity, he wished to say, "Yes, you played 
it excellently and I can see that it is a very difficult piece to 
play," but instead of that he said : "Yes, you played it ex- 
cellently and I can see that it is a very difficult place to . . ." 
Here the gentleman's state of mind, the discomfort of a full 
bladder, the desire to get home betrayed itself in his lapsus 
linguae. 

In the first edition of my book "Psychoanalysis" there 
was a mistake in spelling about which I knew nothing until 
the second edition was published, when I received two letters 
from different people asking me to account for the misspelled 
word "omission." It was written with double "m," thus: 
"ommission." When I looked into the matter I found that 
the mistake was also present in the first edition, which ap- 
peared in 1912, and for which I was absolutely entirely re- 
sponsible. The second edition, however, that came out a 
few years later, was read by a professional proofreader who 
as you know, is just an objective reading agent and so the 
responsibility for the error lay entirely with him. Now I 
thought to myself : "The stenographer, the compositor, the 
proofreaders and myself have made the same mistake. 
Why ?" To understand the reason for it, you must know in 
what connection the word occurred. I quoted in the book 
a mistake that was made in the so called "Wicked Bible," 
printed in 1631, where instead of "Thou shalt not commit 
adultery" it stated, "Thou shalt commit adultery." The 
printer was fined and the Bible was confiscated ; I added that 
the publisher had to pay a large sum of money for this 
"ommission." The explanation is that as there was a fine 



96 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

in this case for an omission, my publisher gave me uncon- 
sciously an additional "m" for good measure, so to say. It 
was a purposeful, unconscious oversight on the part of every 
one who read the episode. 

A Hartford, Conn., paper a few years ago made the error 
which gave rise to a great deal of animosity. It wished to say 
about a certain congressman that "it is unfortunate that Mr. 
H. G. is no longer a member of Congress." Instead it stated 
that "it is fortunate that Mr. H. G. is no longer a member of 
Congress." I have no doubt that the person who made the 
mistake really thought that it was fortunate that Mr. H. G. 
was no longer in Congress. 

I reported a case of a newly married woman who, much to 
her displeasure, was compelled to typewrite her husband's 
manuscripts. Instead of going to church one Sunday morn- 
ing, she had to sit there at the typewriter and her work was 
full of errors like these, — parson for person, bridle for 
bridal. You see what was on her mind. She simply gave 
vent to her real thoughts: "I am a bride and instead of 
taking it easy and going to church on Sunday morning, I am 
harnessed and have to work here." 

A doctor once asked me to render him a favor and intro- 
duce a certain Mr. K. to him. I wrote him, saying : "I am 
very glad to do so, as Mr. K. had considerable experience 
inn this matter." He returned the letter with the request 
that I explain to him why I wrote "inn" and not "in." Mr. 
K. was very much addicted to alcohol and was always to be 
found in a certain inn which I knew very well and which I 
associated in my mind with a particular experience that oc- 
curred there in connection with him. 

Some years ago I received the following : "Dear Doctor : 
After reading your valuable book 'Psychoanalysis' I beg to 
enclose a cutting from the New York Times dated 30 April 
1916 containing the following passage which might interest 



PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERY-DAY LIFE 97 

you: 'Declaring that international law is international 
mortality, Judge Gray of Delaware expressed belief etc.' 
Undoubtedly Judge Gray said morality, meaning that inter- 
national law is intended for international welfare and happi- 
ness; however, the Times' reporter or printer unconsciously 
manifested by his mistake that international law as it stands 
to-day does not bring happiness and welfare to mankind 
(morality) but destruction and misery (mortality). This 
nicely bears out your contention that no mistake is utterly 
unintentional." 

Note the following little slip : A woman writing to an ac- 
quaintance asking her for a loan of $300.00 said, among 
other things : "I am rolling on you as a friend," instead of 
"I am relying on you as a friend." 

There are also numerous lapses in reading that we fre- 
quently make. Let me give you an example. When on 
board a ship I once met a gentleman who was bitterly in- 
censed at doctors. We managed to get along very well to- 
gether, but every time he had the opportunity to knock the 
profession, he took full advantage of it. One day he im- 
parted to me this bit of information with no little gusto: — 
"I just read a name of a doctor and it is the most appro- 
priate name I have ever met; it is Slayer." The name 
strongly appealed to him. I asked him to show me the 
magazine where he read it and I soon discovered that it was 
"Salyer." In his complex readiness, he unconsciously dis- 
torted the name to suit his own feelings. 

Besides the lapses that we have discussed, there are also 
symbolic actions which a person performs unconsciously and 
automatically and which he considers entirely 
accidental. Depending upon their mechanism symtooiio 
they are either simple or complicated and mani- A 
fest themselves in such unconscious mannerisms as playing 



98 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

with one's mustache, jingling of coins in one's pocket, 
disarranging or arranging of one's clothes. These acts 
always conceal a definite meaning, though it is a common 
observation that when people are questioned about them, 
they usually shrug their shoulders more or less indiffer- 
ently and assure you that they were just playing. They 
are instructive to the physician who often gathers from 
them many valuable hints for the interpretation of symp- 
toms; to the student of human nature they are replete 
with human interest, and writers like Dickens and Thack- 
eray have described them quite at length and with con- 
siderable insight. The common observation that "actions 
speak louder than words" contains a deeper meaning than we 
generally suppose. An individual has two languages in 
which he expresses himself, one @f which consists of these 
little actions of which he is entirely unaware. I recall a 
woman, for instance, who would invariably rub her hands 
on her lap in a characteristic fashion whenever she came to 
some matter that she did not wish to dwell on. In time 
I learned in that way just what she wished to disclose, and 
when I finished for her what she had begun to say, she would 
add, "Of course you know it, that's why I did not want to 
talk about it." As Freud has so aptly put it, "When the lips 
are mute, the fingers talk." 

Some of these symbolic actions are, of course, very much 
more complex. A young lady, for instance, whom I have 
known, was unfortunate enough not to have good looks. It 
was one of the reasons why she was nervous. I tried hard 
to console her, and reminded her of Dostoyevski's contention 
that there is no woman that is ugly. She had no friends and 
was morose and depressed. It was at the time of the 
European war and one day she informed me that she had 
decided to go to France. When I asked her what she was 
going to do there, I learned that she was going to nurse 



PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERY-DAY LIFE 99 

blind soldiers. You observe here the force of the uncon- 
scious, though she had no idea, of course, of the deeper 
significance of her decision. 

One of my patients came to me one morning and I noticed 
that he was very irritable. When I inquired what had oc- 
curred, he at first declined to talk, but finally told me that he 
had just quarrelled with his best friend because of the man- 
ner in which the latter asked him to do something. In- 
stead of "Please hang up my coat, John" his friend, he 
went on to say, just said, "Hang up my coat," and he felt 
that he should have been more polite. Now we must re- 
member that whenever we find too much emotivity as- 
sociated with an idea, there must of necessity be a good 
reason for it. To discover it we must track the emotion to 
its hidden sources. Analysis discovered that the patient 
happened to read in his morning's paper about a man who 
committed suicide by hanging himself ; that brought back to 
his mind the skeleton of a similar experience in his i own 
family, which I may say in passing, he did not disclose to me 
in spite of the fact that he had been consulting me for a few 
months. He was altogether unconscious of the family mis- 
fortune when he was bid to hang up his friend's coat but the 
word "hang" soon touched a sensitive spot in his psychic 
life, it struck a complex, and there at once followed a flow 
of repressed emotion. As you may see, the emotion at- 
tached itself to altogether exogenous psychic material, it was 
related to his friend's innocent remark only in respect of the 
mere association of the word "hang." 

Losing is another interesting symbolic action. I know I 
will surprise a good many of you when I make the "broad 
statement that we lose nothing that we really want. It is 
nevertheless true. No one likes to carry an umbrella or wear 
rubbers, and that is why such things are so often lost. Some- 
times you leave or forget to take an article in a certain 



ioo PSYCHOANALYSIS 

place; this may mean one of the two things; either that 
you would like to come back to the place, in which case the 
article will serve as an excuse for your return, or that you 
know that it is quite safe there. A young girl told me 
recently that a young man asked her to keep his diploma for 
him. I remarked that she would have to be careful, and no 
mistake, the inevitable happened: the young man showed 
symbolically exactly where he wished to be. A man con- 
sulted me once, who carried a big, heavy overcoat on his*arm. 
When he left my office, he forgot to take it and I called him 
back. Upon returning it occurred to him to inquire about 
something else he was anxious to know. When I was done, 
he .left, again forgetting to take his coat, and when I now 
called *him back for the second time, he exclaimed : "Damn 
my father-in-law, I have to carry this coat to his office." 
I have regularly quite a collection of these forgotten articles 
in my office; just at present I have among other things, a 
half dozen gloves, a number of pairs of rubbers, and the 
lining from a man's hat. 

Mr. M., a landscape gardener, lost some beautiful photo- 
graphs while I was with him on a train. Some time later I 
met the man who originally introduced me to him and I 
commented on the loss. "Oh, isn't that funny," he im- 
mediately interposed, "he lost them when he was with me 
also." I then had good reason to suspect that the photo- 
graphs were not his own. The next time I saw Mr. M. 
I asked him whether they were really his own genuine work 
and he answered, "No, not exactly my work, because the 
people don't allow me to take a photograph of the work I 
had done on their estate, but they are almost the same as 
mine." He was a conscientious man and continued to lose 
them because he suffered from qualms of conscience. 

Many times we lose things because we wish to make some 
sort of sacrifice. I have reported the case of a young woman, 



PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERY-DAY LIFE 101 

who, while going shopping one day, threw away a ten dollar 
bill and only upon reaching the department store did she 
realize what she had done. She was a very ardent church 
member before she married, and was accustomed to donate 
liberally to the church. When she married, her husband, 
who was a bit tight, explained that inasmuch as times were 
rather hard, she had better not make any further contribu- 
tions for the present. The ten dollars was the sum she was 
wont to give to the church in the past. When she threw it 
away, she thought unconsciously, "He does not permit me 
to donate it to the church, so that I'll just let some one find 
it and keep it." 

Losing keys has also a definite symbolic import. I now 
recall the case of a woman at a western hotel who had the 
reputation of perpetually losing the key to her room; it 
seemed that every time she took the key out of the door, she 
lost it. On the other hand, she had the habit of not only 
locking her room, but also of barring the door with a trunk 
or a chiffonier so that it was thus locked the more safely. 
How are we to explain this peculiar condition? Analysis 
reveals that her losing the keys expresses her unconscious 
desire to have her room open all the time. But if that is so, 
why did she bar the door? Consciously, no doubt, she de- 
sired to have the door closed, but unconsciously there was a 
different set of forces operating. The motive that induced 
her to lose the keys is of such a nature as to repel her in 
conscious life. She was a young woman who had been 
separated from her husband, and there is no doubt that she 
was unconsciously disturbed by sex. 

We may observe this same mechanism in the morbid fear 
of burglars. You may perhaps know that a great many 
women, as well as some men, are in mortal dread of burglars ; 
particularly does this hold true of old maids. One of my 
patients of this type was a woman who resided in one of the 



102 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

finest apartment houses in New York. Though she had a 
room right between her father's and brother's, she was never- 
theless always afraid ; it was a common practice for her, upon 
retiring, to look very carefully under the bed to make sure 
that no unwelcome stranger had perchance surreptitiously 
entered. As I have already said previously, whenever we 
see such marked emotivity, we must pause and ask ourselves 
what is its source. This woman herself realized how absurd 
was her fear. Indeed, when she came to me she said: 
"Doctor, you don't have to tell me that it is impossible for 
a burglar to get into my room, because I know that too well 
myself, but despite all that, I am afraid." We know that 
repressed desire is always at the root of a disproportionate 
amount of fear; there is repressed libido at the basis of a 
marked emotivity. Language has recognized this condition, 
when it associates the word "panic" with the sensual God, 
Pan. You can well imagine how a woman of her age, who 
has been brought up very prudishly, will repress a sexual 
thought or fancy the moment it enters her consciousness. 
But the "cosmic" sex energy is there and it is forever striv- 
ing to come to the surface, much as her whole being revolts 
against it. The mind, under the circumstances, makes an 
interesting detour ; the hidden wish to have a man illicitly in 
the bed chamber expresses itself in the fear of an intruding 
burglar. 

In "collections" we see another common symbolic action. 
I am not referring to the collections of books, paintings and 
collections the like, engaged in by so called professional col- 
lectors. I am interested at present only in those collections 
that people generally regard as more or less peculiar. I 
have known a man, for instance, who collected stick pins. 
One woman collected pictures of pigs ; another candlesticks. 
One lady had a few hundred of all kinds of pocketbooks 



PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERY-DAY LIFE 103 

which she guarded most jealously ; her daughter, who was a 
patient of mine, informed me that when she wanted one, she 
had to fight with her mother for weeks before she could 
have it. A man came to my attention who collected those 
collar buttons that one finds in newly laundered shirts; he 
requested all his friends to save them for him; he would 
most industriously assort them in boxes. One lady collected 
stones, not from the wall of Jerusalem or Rome, to be sure, 
but promiscuously, wherever she happened to stray; she 
would assort and name them. When I saw the collection for 
the first time I thought she was engaged in some definite 
scientific pursuit, that perhaps the various stones repre- 
sented different fossils. A German writer who investigated 
the subject found that some people collected the most pe- 
culiar things. The Countess Chavan Narischkin, for in- 
stance, paid enormous sums for bed pans from Marie An- 
toinette and Mme. Pompadour and other celebrities. A naval 
officer collected uniform buttons ; a man collected corkscrews 
for thirty years ; the obstetrician Braun collected pubic hair, 
which he skilfully acquired while examining his patients. 

The question naturally arises : "Why do people engage in 
such things ?" I may perhaps best answer this by giving one 
or two illustrations. At a meeting of a psychoanalytic 
society in Zurich hospital, one of the members, an 
old bachelor, once took occasion to reveal this interesting 
bit of information: "Gentlemen, I want to tell you some- 
thing quite strange. I take my vacation every year when 
a certain fly is swarming; I want to say that I have 
absolutely no interest in its scientific aspects. But I 
love to catch the insect and for about two weeks or so I 
gather it in great numbers and then throw it away. It 
is my most pleasing pastime." On inquiry it was found 
that the fly was of the "lobalia" species, designated in the 
Swiss dialect as the "maiden." This innocent little occu- 



io 4 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

pation was thus a highly interesting symbolic action, which 
revealed the unconscious thoughts and tendencies of this 
man; how natural for this old bachelor to be thinking of 
catching the "maiden" while he was on his vacation! He 
was a little astonished at this bit of analysis, but he confessed 
that he could see no other explanation for his hobby. He 
was quite frank. There surely was a reason why this man 
did not marry ; and whatever were the inhibitions in his case, 
he showed his real motives by occupying himself in this way. 
When we take our vacation, consciously or unconsciously, 
somewhere deep down in our heart we think of "catching" 
maidens. It has been observed, and very aptly, that most en- 
gagements take place in summer resorts, steamers and similar 
places. 

Miss T., a woman of considerable education and refine- 
ment, was greatly interested in collecting works on mush- 
rooms ; knowing that I read foreign languages, she asked me 
on one occasion to recommend to her some books on the sub- 
ject, particularly those with illustrated cuts from German, 
French, or Italian sources. I brought her some and on in- 
quiring whether she had a reading knowledge of those 
languages, I learned that she was not at all acquainted with 
them, but that her whole interest was centered in the illustra- 
tions. I knew very little at the time about matters of this 
nature, and her behavior in this regard seemed strange to me. 
I learned, for instance, that on one occasion she paid as much 
as six dollars for one German work. Some years after I 
had become interested in Freudian psychology, I had the op- 
portunity to meet Miss T. and I took occasion to find out 
what was back of her interest in works on mushrooms. On 
inquiring whether she still collected cuts on the subject, she 
replied : "Oh, yes, I have quite a collection." I asked her to 
tell me how she happened to begin her hobby, and she 
merely replied: "Well, I really don't know how it came 



PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERY-DAY LIFE 105 

about. I was on my vacation in the mountains ; one night I 
could not fall asleep, hard as I tried. I arose very early the 
next morning, and walking out on the lawn, I found some 
mushrooms ; I took them to the cook, who fried them for me. 
Since then I was interested in pictures of mushrooms." 

What is the significance of Miss TVs hobby? In the first 
place, we know that when a person suffers from insomnia, 
it can be attributed to only one of two causes, either to some 
organic disturbance, such as lung or heart trouble, that is, 
to some definite organic pain, or to some strictly nervous 
condition. Most of the nervous insomnias are always due to 
a lack of emotional outlet; and people suffering from them 
usually go to bed and fancy and daydream, and thus are 
unable to fall asleep. As Miss T. appeared perfectly 
healthy, I concluded that she must have experienced some 
emotional disturbance that night. When I had explained to 
her the motive that prompted me to inquire into the situation, 
she gave me the following information: During her vaca- 
tion there was a middle-aged man, who met her quite fre- 
quently and with whom she would take long walks ; he ap- 
parently paid her a great deal of attention. One evening 
he was a bit intoxicated, and his behavior toward her was 
rude and suggestive ; she left him and returned to her room. 
It was following that night that she began to take an in- 
terest in the mushroom. It is not hard to surmise what 
transpired. His suggestive remarks, disquieting and re- 
pelling as they were, aroused sex fancies which she could not 
shake off from her mind. Thoughts of this nature are in- 
stinctive and persist always, no matter how hard we try to 
banish them. Now if we remember that certain types of 
mushrooms are scientifically designated as "phallus," which 
means, penis, we may readily see what it was that uncon- 
sciously attracted her attention to the mushroom; indeed, 
the very object that so shocked her the evening before, now 



106 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

unconsciously acquired a tremendous significance and interest 
for her. That is why she continued to collect the mush- 
room; there was absolutely no scientific reason why she 
should take an interest in the work. 

From the above considerations, it is clearly seen that such 
collections serve as emotional outlets. This is borne out also 
in the collections of stamps, birds' eggs, or nests, that we 
find at the prepubescent age. It is then that the emotions of 
sex and love become manifest and the child finds it difficult 
to control them. It is the age when the child undergoes 
marked psychological changes; powerfully latent forces be- 
gin to manifest themselves in the psychic life. Youth, as we 
all know, is then dissatisfied, it often revolts, leaving home 
and kindred. Some children may become very religious; 
according to statistics from Evangelists, most conversions 
take place at this age. The child becomes critical, he seems 
to lose his old regard for his parents ; and it is perhaps with 
no little degree of disappointment or even pain that he be- 
gins to realize that after all mother and father are not as 
omniscient and omnipotent as he supposed. What he really 
craves for is expression of the sexual emotions in the form 
of mating. The mating season begins at this time; but as 
this gross manifestation of sex must be deferred in the 
human being to a later period, and as we are taught to repress 
it from the very beginning, this emotional unrest and sexual 
craving merely expresses itself in a vague groping for some- 
thing not altogether tangible or concrete. Owing to cultural 
forces, the real aim is gradually distorted; we have crying 
spells among girls, and boys often take an interest in the 
manifest part of sex. In the main, however, sex is re- 
pressed; they may, of course, occasionally consult the dic- 
tionary about the meaning of certain significant words, or 
read suggestive stories, or write little things that are lewd. 
The desire for outward expression nevertheless remains; 



PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERY-DAY LIFE 107 

and unconsciously the collection offers in some cases the 
necessary emotional outlet. Collecting among children, 
therefore, is to be encouraged, particularly if it furnishes 
knowledge at the same time. 

That the collecting mania is a reaction to an unconscious 
need, to an inner feeling of voidness concerning some par- 
ticular craving is best seen in the collections made by the 
insane. It is common to see a lunatic strutting about with 
all sorts of things bulging from his pockets. The patient has 
to be searched from day to day lest he accumulate enormous 
heaps of rubbish. When in the insane asylum, I would 
sometimes secure a big bundle belonging to one of the in- 
mates and begin to unravel it ; it would be wrapped in about 
a hunded papers and when I reached the nucleus, I found 
but a few pieces of glass or stone, in other words, nothing 
but trash. They consider this refuse extremely valuable 
and it is impossible to take it away from them in the waking 
state, for they will resist tooth and nail. I found very soon 
that such patients usually have delusions of poverty; they 
feel that they have lost everything. It may surprise you 
to know that a goodly number of such patients are well-to- 
do; you see that borne out particularly in private practice. 
I knew an old wealthy woman whose children asked me to 
examine her, because she would store away a lot of old news- 
papers and rubbish in a safe ; indeed she would fill an extra 
safe with them. On inquiring why she did that, she said, 
"Well, every little thing counts nowadays." The mental 
deterioration in such patients blurs their sense of value, and 
like children who experience a vague craving for something, 
they blindly follow the impulse. 

I have found a good many people who collected on a large 
scale until some marked change occurred in their existence. 
I knew a man, a bachelor, for instance, who had a room rilled 
with long narrow vases which he collected for years. He felt 



108 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

that there was something very artistic in that particular form 
of vases, and formulated various theories about their origin, 
etc. He had over thirty such vases and every one of them 
had a name. Most of them were labelled in his own very 
small script as, Miss Essie, Miss Gwendolyn, and similar 
fancy maiden names. When he showed them to me he 
remarked: "You see I'm not as lonesome as you imagine. 
I have plenty of girls with me." To my question he answered 
that the name of one of the vases was Mrs. Gamma. 

As this man was not analyzed by me I could not obtain 
direct information about the origin of this collection and can 
only surmise the meaning of it. He told me that he began 
his collection hobby with violins and that he changed to vases 
because, although violins are also elongated and graceful, 
they did not lend themselves for his hobby as well as vases. 
For one thing, he did not care to buy cheap violins and he 
could not aflord expensive ones. The naming of his vases 
came to him as an inspiration. He once bought one and the 
idea occurred to him that "she recalled Gwendolyn" and 
henceforth he called it by that name, and gradually christened 
all the others. I could not get any reason why he named 
one Mrs. Gamma except that this particular vase looked to 
him something like the Greek letter Gamma. As I said, this 
man was an elderly bachelor of about forty-five, who had 
nothing whatever to do with the fair sex. He lived with his 
maiden aunt since his mother died, and when the former 
was gathered to her ancestors he kept a bachelor's apart- 
ment with a Japanese valet. Years later I was informed 
by the same man who first introduced me to him, that the 
vase collector suddenly married a young widow with two 
children. It was following some operation during which he 
was nursed by this widow that he decided to make her his 
wife. "Does he still collect vases ?" I inquired. The answer 
which was sent to me a few weeks later read as follows: 



PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERY-DAY LIFE 109 

"I paid a visit to Mr. Vase Collector and saw little of his 
former hobby. He lives quite contentedly with his family 
in a six room apartment. He told me that his family claims 
all his spare time, that for the present at least he has no 
interest in his former hobby." 

I have had occasion to analyze some people of this type, 
and I have concluded that such feverish collecting activities 
represent what we call "fetichism," a condition in which an 
inanimate object is endowed with certain marked emotional 
feelings. It was essentially a fetich for the valiant knight, 
wandering forth in quest of adventure, to take along with 
him a handkerchief from the fair lady which he guarded 
most religiously. 

"Get me a handkerchief from her bosom, a 
garter of my love." 

The cases that I have in mind have, however, a much 
greater emotional endowment than that of the valiant knight. 
These fetichisms always have a symbolic significance. After 
the first edition of my book "Psychoanalysis" appeared, I 
received a letter from a gentleman who informed me that 
when his old grandfather died it was found that he left 
thousands of horseshoes that he collected, and that it was 
quite a problem for his children to know what to do with 
them. He stated that the man was one of the pioneers in 
the state of Indiana where he was born, an individual abso- 
lutely typical of that pioneer type; he had three wives and 
when his last one died, he began to pay overtures to the 
hired girls. The writer closed his letter by remarking that 
he thought that every horseshoe represented a certain 
amorous thought in the old man's mind. When you learn 
the origin of the horseshoe, 1 that it was originally nothing 
but the genitals of cows or camels which were stuck up over 

1 Cf. A. A. Brill, Psychoanalysis, Its Theories and Applications. 
3rd Edit. W. B. Saunders, Philadelphia. 



no PSYCHOANALYSIS 

the doors to avoid evil spirits, you will see that there is good 
reason for believing that the correspondent's interpretation 
is undoubtedly correct. We may posit, then, the general 
rule that no person who is emotionally satisfied, whose work 
sufficiently absorbs him and satisfies his emotional demands, 
really collects to any marked degree, except, of course, if 
he is a professional collector. 

It is very difficult to convince people who are not ac- 
quainted with the work we are doing, of the deeper psycho- 
logical meaning of these collecting manias. There is nothing 
arbitrary or fortuitous about these occupations; they have 
a definite significance in each individual's life, and if you 
once gain the person's confidence you will find that they are 
symbolic of some profound quest, perhaps of some latent 
erotic striving or wish, which by reason of certain inhibi- 
tions, he was unable to realize. "Das Ewige weibliche zieht 
uns immer an." They are unconscious symbolic actions of 
which the average person is altogether unaware. 

We have thus far dwelt on the psychopathology of every- 
day life, and I have attempted to show you how such simple 
or complex indicators are present in every-day conversation 
and actions. Our fundamental principle is that nothing can 
be hidden ; repressed thoughts forever strive to come to the 
surface, and our real motives and wishes become manifest 
in the "little unconscious ways" of every-day life. As Van 
Dyke has so happily put it: "Men's little ways are usually 
more interesting and often more instructive than their grand 
manners. When they are off guard they frequently show to 
better advantage than when they are on parade." 

It may be asked, "What value is there in knowing these 
psychic mechanisms?" I may perhaps best answer this 
question by relating to you a story told to me by one of my 
patients. An admirer of Freud, she brought up her children 
to understand these unconscious psychic manifestations. 



PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF EVERY-DAY LIFE ill 

One summer her daughter, a girl of nineteen, invited a young 
man to spend a few weeks at their country home. Every- 
thing went well and everybody was happy; the young man 
thought highly of his young friend, and Renee confided in 
her mother. He was invited to come again the following 
summer, but this time the daughter had also her classmate 
with her and the young man was sufficiently indiscreet to 
show attention to this new arrival. Very soon the mother 
began to learn how much Renee hated him and how she 
wished that he would leave, but nothing could be done, be- 
cause the invitation was for a certain number of weeks. 
Meanwhile he was fed on psychopathology of every-day life, 
its nature and meaning, and he was soon well up in the new 
study. One day he broke this news to Renee: "I just re- 
ceived a message from the city and I have to go home." He 
left, and when he reached the city, he addressed her a little 
note, saying: "I didn't tell you the truth. I really didn't 
have to go, but I noticed for a few days that you called me 
Jack, and knowing that you hate Jack, and as your mistake 
shows that you identified me with him, I thought you hated 
me too. So it was better for me to leave." When the girl 
had finished reading the little missive, it was as if lightning 
had struck her from a clear sky. Running up to her mother 
she exclaimed: "There you are with your Freud!" The 
mother could not understand at first what had happened, but 
upon learning the situation, she began to calm the girl. 
"Now look here," she explained, "after all, you were very 
anxious that he leave, for you said you hated him ; and now 
that he is gone you have no reason to be angry." 

Thus the daughter was deeply hurt merely because her 
real state of feeling was discovered. The young man did 
exactly what she wished him to, and she had no reason to 
take offence. It seems to me that if we all regard matters 
of this sort in their proper light we would be relieved of a 



112 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

great many distressing problems : It was good for the young 
man to take the hint; they were really both benefited; he 
felt more comfortable and she was freed of an unnecessary 
burden. We should learn to regard our unconscious motives 
as much a part of our true selves as our conscious acts; 
there is no reason why we should be ashamed or alarmed 
when they are discovered. There is nothing shameful in the 
fact that an ardent worker for the protection of cruelty to 
animals has tortured chickens when she was a child, or that 
a prison reformer had indulged in primitive acts in early 
boyhood. Our civilization is a resultant of these contrary 
forces in the individual. The good in us is only a reaction 
to what was once bad and that had to be repressed. The 
saint is a former sinner. We are all human and have our 
shortcomings. "Homo sum; human* nihil mihil alienum 
puto." And so I feel that we would all be happier, if we 
would only be truthful at all times. But the point is that we 
are for the most part not truthful to ourselves — and hence 
these slips or mistakes which, in their own small way, have 
the same relation to the unconscious as the symptom itself. 
After all it was best for everybody concerned that the young 
man understood the meaning of this identification and 
terminated the unbearable situation by his departure. 



CHAPTER V 
WIT: ITS TECHNIQUE AND TENDENCIES 

Some of the examples that I have given you of the psycho- 
pathology of every-day life were distinctly mirth provoking 
and could easily pass as witticisms. And as a matter of fact 
the slip made at the evening dance, when one of the guests 
remarked : "There is one fine thing about Teddy, he always 
gives you a square weal," when he wished to say a "square 
deal," called forth no little laughter from you. The guests 
caught at once the significance of the slip, for 
it expressed just what they were thinking about. Teciu 
Here the unconscious not only showed the dis- of u 

Wit 

appointed state of mind but the technique em- 
ployed in expressing it rendered it also witty. In other 
words, besides being a mere lapsus linguae, it was also a 
witticism. The question now suggests itself: "How was 
the wit produced in this case?" At first sight, one might 
say that it was accomplished in a very simple way, — by 
changing just one letter in the word deal and thus giving 
an entirely different meaning to the whole phrase. If the 
guests had been regaled with the appropriate meal, the slip 
would not have been made, or if perchance it had been made, 
it would have passed unnoticed. We may say, therefore, 
that the wit was produced first, because the wording fitted 
in with the situation, and secondly, because of the slight 
changing in the word. The unconscious expression served as 
a compensation for the disappointment of both the speaker 
and the guests generally. Instead of feeling angry at the 

"3 



ii4 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

host for serving sandwiches and lemonade when something 
more substantial was expected, they were now deriving much 
pleasure from passing around the huge joke. If one should 
ask what actually produced the pleasure in the witticism, we 
would have to say that the guests were fascinated and amused 
because through the slip, the speaker could openly voice the 
sentiment of all, telling the host what everybody thought of 
him, but could not say because of social proprieties. In 
other words, one may say that every guest thought : "What 
a stingy host," but no one could say it aloud. Through the 
lapsus linguae, however, the host was actually told : "you are 
stingy; you can afford to give us a generous meal, instead 
you serve merely sandwiches and lemonade." But such an 
open expression was impossible in that social gathering. We 
may say, in brief, that a change of the letter "d" to "m" 
allowed the guests to draw pleasure from otherwise for- 
bidden sources. Because the truth was told where one 
usually lies, every one was happy, except the one to whom 
the truth was told, — the host. The particular example shows 
that there is some connection between faulty actions and 
wit in both technique and psychology. In order to under- 
stand this connection better, it may be wise to go a bit deeper 
into the nature and mechanism of wit. 

In a paper that I wrote some years ago on "Wit" I men- 
tioned the fact that in a short story I had read, one of the 
characters, a "sport," speaks of the Christmas season as the 
"Alcoholidays." Here two words are fused together be- 
cause of a certain intimate connection between them, and the 
resultant new word expresses a certain sense to the hearer 
which he conceives as witty. We know that on holidays one 
allows himself a greater degree of freedom than on ordinary 
days, and in the past they were conducive to alcoholic in- 
dulgence. And so when one hears the word "alcoholidays," 
one smiles and knows what the person means to convey. The 



WIT: ITS TECHNIQUE AND TENDENCIES 115 

word represents a fusion, a condensation of ideas as well as 
words. Instead of saying "On holidays one gets drunk and 
feels well," the speaker fused the whole thought into one 
word, — "alcoholidays." 

Let us take another example of condensation as it is seen 
in wit. In his work "Lothair" Disraeli said, "When a man 
falls into anecdotage, it is time for him to retire." We may 
readily see that the fused word is made up of "anecdote" 
and "dotage." We know that in old age people resort to 
anecdotes. This is borne out among sane and insane alike. 
In senile dementia, one of the most important diagnostic 
points is a lack of impressibility for recent impressions and 
a continual return to the past. The patient does not remem- 
ber what he had for breakfast a half hour after, he goes out 
to do an errand and forgets what it is. But he remembers 
things of the remote past. He usually begins, "When I was 
in the Civil War. . . ." or "You should have seen the girls 
of fifty years ago. . . .," etc. Normal aged people show 
the same mechanism, but of course not to so marked a degree. 
When an individual resorts to anecdotes it means that he 
no longer feels himself a part of the present, that he is in 
dotage and hence may as well retire. And as a matter of 
fact he has retired, psychiatrically speaking. The word 
"anecdotage" is therefore a condensation of a number of 
thoughts as well as of words. 

Some one said : "All men are homeless, but some men are 
home less than others." Here the word "homeless" is not 
a new word, but if you break it up into two parts you get 
two distinct words expressing an entirely different idea. 
The wit here is altogether due to the technique. 

Another illustration is the following: The man who says 
the present styles are shocking is always willing to be a 
shock-absorber. 

Once I ran on to this remark : "Some lawyers earn their 



n6 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

bread by the sweat of their brow-beating." Here again, we 
see the condensation. The well-known Biblical phrase, "To 
earn thy bread by the sweat of the brow," is modified here, 
the fusion of the two words giving an altogether different 
meaning to the expression, for one at once recalls a well 
known characteristic of many lawyers. 

In the category of condensation of words we may place 
also the following: "Not being favored by Dame Luck, he 
became a Lame Duck!' This form of wit is what the Ger- 
mans call "Schuttel-rheim," — shuffling rhyme. Here is an- 
other example of it: It was Mr. Smith's first Sunday as 
usher in church. He was all flustered, and turning to a lady 
who entered, he said : "This way, lady, I will sew you into a 
sheet." A very fine example of this type of wit is seen in 
the case of that punctilious gentleman who made the indeli- 
cate slip we noted on a previous occasion. 

Just as we have condensation of words, so we have con- 
densation of thoughts. A very good example of what I mean 
is an army witticism that I have cited in one of my papers. 
"A corporal, during drill, shouts to the recruits: 'Keep it 
up, boys, courage and perseverance bring everything. The 
effff of Columbus was not laid in a day.' Here you see 
there were two thoughts, two sayings fused together : 'Rome 
was not built in a day/ and the anecdote of the egg of Co- 
lumbus. What the corporal meant to say was, all that you 
boys need is practice ; it is as simple as it was for Columbus 
to stand the egg on end; don't be discouraged, Rome was 
not built in a day. He fused these two ideas, however, and 
thus produced the substitutive formation, 'the egg of Co- 
lumbus was not laid in a day/ which on account of its 
absurdity and incongruity carries the wit of the jest." 

We may also produce condensation of thought by using 
the same expression or the same words in different meanings. 
For example: The question is asked: "Why was Goliath 



WIT: ITS TECHNIQUE AND TENDENCIES 117 

surprised when David struck him with a stone?" The answer 
is : "Because such a thing never entered his head before!" 
Here the witticism is entirely due to the fact that the ex- 
pression "entering one's head" is used in an entirely different 
sense from the idea of a "stone entering one's head." If the 
answer had been, "Because such a thing never pierced his 
head before," there would have been no witticism. It is 
because the word "enter" was used in the figurative sense, as 
denoting cognizance or awareness, that the joke was produced. 
The mechanism of condensation noted above plays an 
extremely important part, not only in wit but also in dreams. 
In the dream, words, pictures, ideas and situations are all 
subject to the process of condensation. Let me give you 
an example. Miss R. dreamed "that she saw a woman, whom 
she later identified as her sister-in-law, standing on a sort 
of platform, surrounded by a multitude of people who were 
apparently applauding her. She was brushing her clothes, 
but instead of brushing them down, she brushed them up." 
The dream was a condensation of the following thoughts: 
"My sister-in-law always likes to be in the limelight; she 
always wants an audience. She is very coarse, and doesn't 
know how to act delicately in polite society." Brushing one's 
clothes with a brush upwards is sometimes extremely im- 
polite and coarse, and describes very well the whole situation. 

Let us now turn to another form of the technique of wit. 
By way of illustration, take this witticism: 

Contributor : "You sit down on every joke I write." 

Editor : "Well, I wouldn't if there was any point to them." 
— (The Christian Advocate, N. Y.) 

The technique lies here seemingly in the double meaning 
of the phrase "to sit down," which is used first, metaphor- 
ically, meaning to reject, and in the second, it is used in the 
actual sense of "sitting down." If, instead of using "to sit 



n8 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

down," one would say, "to reject," just as in the preceding 
witticism, if it were said "to pierce" instead of "to enter," 
there would be no wit. When one examines the witticism 
more closely, however, one finds that the reduction has not 
been applied to the right place. The jest does not lie in the 
contributor's statement, but rather in the editor's rejoinder, 
that is, in the answer, "Well, I wouldn't if there was any 
point to them." The editor takes advantage of the double 
meaning of "to sit down" and produces wit by ignoring the 
empty sense and using it literally. His own use of the word 
in the idiomatic sense furnishes the wit. For if his answer 
had been, "Well, I wouldn't if there was any wit to them," 
there would have been no joke. 

In order to understand better the mechanism illustrated 
by the above jokes, let us take another example : 
A Favored Mortal 

The Mendicant: — "Could you help a poor homeless guy 
that ain't got a dollar nor a friend?" 

Old Multirox: — "Nof a friend? No one to tell you 
disagreeable things for your own good? No one 
ment to touch you for a dollar? Man, you don't know 

your luck." — (Judge, 1921.) 

How is the wit produced here? You see Old Multirox 
displaces the accent from the mendicant's request for ma- 
terial help to something entirely different, when he says, 
"not a friend," etc. He deliberately ignores the first part of 
the mendicant's recital asking for money, and dwells on the 
last part of the sentence which the beggar gave as a secondary 
reason for asking him for help. He thus tries to give the 
beggar the impression that far from being badly off because 
he has not a friend, he is to be congratulated for being so 
fortunate. Whatever he said about a friend may be gen- 
erally true of some friends but that was beside the question 
here. The beggar asked for money and cared Uttle about a 



WIT: ITS TECHNIQUE AND TENDENCIES 119 

lecture on the badness of having friends. In other words, 
the supposed benefactor displaced the accent from the main 
issue, the request for money, to the explanatory, though 
unimportant part of the whole thing. 

In both of the above examples the technique lies in the 
displacement of the psychic accent; this is especially marked 
in the last joke : "Not a friend ?" The supposed benefactor 
answers as if the request were for a friend, and the element 
of charity does not appear at all. 

Take another example : A man loses his gold-headed cane. 
The next morning he recalls that he must have left it in a 
cafe, but it occurs to him that he visited four cafes during 
that evening. He inquires in one of them: "Waiter, did 
I leave a cane here?" "No cane was found" was the 
answer, He then calls at the next restaurant, asks the same 
question but receives the same answer. He visits the third 
place and again asks: "Alphonse, have I left my cane here 
yesterday?" "No, monsieur, nothing was found." When 
he reaches the fourth restaurant he is pretty well discouraged. 
He asks the same question but this time the waiter replies: 
"Yes, we have it." He was very pleased and said: "I shall 
never go to the other cafes again: this is the only place I will 
visit hereafter" Where does the wit lie ? Here again, the 
man displaces the whole emotional accent from the important 
point to something very trivial. He is keenly disappointed 
in those cafes where the cane was not found, forgetting that 
it was no fault of theirs that he did not leave it there. He 
behaves as if the cane had been in all the four places and all, 
but the last, refused to return it to him. In other words, 
he assumes that there are four canes, and that he lost three. 

The above joke illustrates also another mechanism which 
we call "automatism." A person falls into a certain trend 



120 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

of thought, gets accustomed to it and follows it automatically, 
regardless of whether it has logic or not. The following 
examples will serve as illustration: 

A dentist had to crawl under his auto in order to make 
some adjustment in the machinery. Applying the monkey 
wrench to it he said soothingly: "Now this is going to hurt 
just a little." 

The father of the bride, an "undertaker, was busily en- 
gaged in getting everything ready for the departure of the 
newlyweds for their honeymoon. At last all 
tism the baggage was in the car and after taking 

affectionate leave of his son-in-law and daughter 
he slammed the door of the car and cried to the driver, 
"Cypress Hills' (one of our great cemeteries). 

In both examples one observes the automatism of thought. 
The dentist could not forget his profession whenever he 
applied any instrument to something. His assuring formula 
became so automatic that he used it even in inanimate objects, 
while the undertaker could only think of the removal of a 
corpse when he slammed the door of the vehicle. 

This leads us to another form of wit which is well illus- 
trated in the following example: 

"Why were they married?" 

"Because they fell in love." 

"And why were they divorced?" 

"Because they fell in love." 

The witticism may recall "the manifold application of the 
same material" : but in this case, the double meaning plays 
no part. The important factor in this example depends on 
the formation of a new and unexpected identity, and on the 
production of ideas and definitions related to each other and 
to a common third. "And why were they divorced ?" It is 
a unification. Unification is also the basis of the quick 



WIT: ITS TECHNIQUE AND TENDENCIES 121 

repartee in wit, for ready repartee consists in using the 
defense for aggression, and in "turning the tables" or in 
"paying with the same coin"; that is, the repartee consists 
in establishing an unexpected identity between attack and 
counter-attack. It is also well illustrated in the following 
examples : 

A lawyer of small stature came into a court to look after 
his client's interests. His opponent, not knowing him, asked 
him what he wanted, and on being told who he was, jokingly 
remarked: "What? Such a little lawyer? Why I could 
put you in my pocket!" "You could," tranquilly responded 
the former, "but then you would have more brains in your 
pocket than in your head" — Here there is a definite estab- 
lishment of identification, of pocket and smallness of stature, 
to a definite third, — "brains," the repartee thus being estab- 
lished. 

Likewise there is a story told about Augustus Caesar who, 
travelling in the province, met a man who resembled him 
very much. He turned to him and said: "Tell 

.. . ., . ±1 Unification 

me, was your mother ever %n the service of the or Repartee 
emperor at Rome?" The man replied: "Not 
my mother, but my father!" This is as clever a retort as 
one could give to a person whom one cannot possibly insult, 
and sums up the situation most admirably. 

Other examples of unification wit or repartee are as 
follows : 

After a poor recitation in English, a student suffering 
from a stigmata of obesity is rebuked thus by the professor : 
"You are better fed than learned." To which the student 
retorts: "Yes, you teach me, and I feed myself." 

He: "Yes, a married man lives a dog's life." 
She : "Yes, barks all day and growls all night." 

— Simplicissimus. 



122 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

There is another form of the technique of wit that we do 
not meet with very often, which illustrates a mechanism 
K-onsense often observed in unconscious mentation. Here 
wit is an example : 

The first cinder speaking to the second : "Why so angry?" 
The second answers : "I have been wasting time in a glass 
eye." 

The witticism is a fine example of animism, by which is 
meant, attributing an animate quality or condition to an 
inanimate object. 1 It is a mechanism which is found also 
in dreams. The wit arises here from the naivity of the 
conception ; every one knows what it means to have a cinder 
in the eye, but when one hears that it is a glass eye, one im- 
mediately sees the comedy instead of the tragedy of the situa- 
tion. No one would laugh if the word "glass" would have 
been omitted; in fact the answer would have been mal a 
propos, because when a cinder gets in the eye it is not a 
question of wasting time. The wit is produced altogether 
by the fact that a situation has been created which belongs 
to the naive, to what we may regard as nonsensical. 

Another form of wit we may designate as elliptical; the 
figure "ellipsis" as used in rhetoric, denoting omission. The 
Ellipsis question is asked: "Do you think ignorance is 
wit bliss?" And the answer is : "Well, you seem to 

be happy!" As is seen, at least one thought is left out be- 
tween the question and the answer. 

We find this same form of wit in the following example : 
Husband to his wife: "If one of us should die I'll live 
in New York." The wit is produced by ignoring the pos- 
sibility of the first part of the statement and acting as if 
there was no question that his wife will die first, thus re- 
vealing what was omitted in conscious thought. 

1 Cf . the conception of talking trees in Greek mythology. 



WIT: ITS TECHNIQUE AND TENDENCIES 123 

There are also witticisms which express other mechanisms 
than those thus far considered. Take, for instance, the 
following : 

The Mark of Perfection 

Dyer : "Horn do you like your new corf" 

Ryer: "Fine! It won't do a thing the salesman claimed 
it would/' Here the wit is produced by uttering the exact 
opposite of what might be expected. One would 
expect such an answer as this: "Very well tion through 
indeed, it does everything that the salesman 
assured us it would do," but the average automobile owner's 
faith in the auto salesman is rudely bumped when he finds 
that the car does not run at least twenty miles on a gallon 
of gas, that this or that part does get out of order or broken, 
etc., etc. The wit-provoking element is the universal knowl- 
edge of the very exaggerating proclivities of salesmen which 
customers always take into consideration. The technique 
is representation through the opposite. 

The following example represents another technique of 
wit which we designate as sense in nonsense: 

Sometime after losing her grandfather little Ethel asked 
her mother if she could play the piano : 

"No, dear; don't you know that we are in mourning?" her 
mother replied. 

"Well," insisted the child, "I don*t think it would be wicked 
if I only played on the black keys." — {Judge, 1921.) 

The child's answer is witty because it is so senseless and 
naive, but as a matter of fact it is made nonsensical only to 
express a senseful reproach to her mother for her sense in 
way of following this conventional hypocrisy of Nonsense 
modern life, the absurd idea of wearing black to express 
one's sorrow over the death of near relatives. What a child 
usually observes is that in reality there is very little mortifi- 
cation over the death of a grandparent, indeed in most cases 



124 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

there is a sigh of relief when dear grandpa is gone, 
because one needs the money and one has been terribly 
annoyed by his protracted illness, etc. A child always ob- 
serves much more than parents realize and soon notices that 
mourning does not deprive the mourner of anything that 
he really wants, but it is used as an excuse for refusing 
invitations from people one dislikes, etc. In brief, the child's 
thoughts could be reduced as follows : "As far as I see you 
haven't given up a single pleasure over the death of grandpa, 
all you do is wear black. Why prohibit me from playing? 
I suppose I could play if the keys were black." 

From the mechanism of sense in nonsense we will proceed 
to "outdoing" wit, of which the following is an example: 

Mrs. A. to Mrs. B. : "Can you recommend your former 
servant, does she understand everything well?" "Oh, yes, 
o-aitLoing s ^ e understands everything even better," an- 
Wit swered Mrs. B. What produces the witticism 

here is that she recommends her servant so very highly that 
she expresses the very opposite ! In other words, the servant 
does not understand anything. ... It is the mechanism of 
representing by the opposite, or the mechanism of outdoing. 

Take, for instance, this excellent joke: A Jew and a 
Greek are in a cafe, enjoying their coffee and talking. Says 
the Greek: "You know, Jacob, the old Greeks were the 
most wonderful people that ever lived. They knew every- 
thing. Just recently they were digging around the Acropolis 
in Athens and they found wires, which shows that the old 
Greeks used telegraphy." Then the Jew: "That's alright, 
but I tell you the Jews were the most wonderful people. 
They recently dug around the walls of Jerusalem and did not 
find anything, which shows that the old Jews used wireless 
telegraphy!" This is a very fine example of outdoing wit ; at 
the same time, as you see, it also tries to represent something 



WIT: ITS TECHNIQUE AND TENDENCIES 125 

by the very opposite : — because nothing was found, therefore 
the supposed condition! 

Very often wit is produced by the expression of something 
similar and cognate, as given in this example from Heinrich 
Heine : 

''This woman resembles Venus de Milo in many points: 
Like Venus de Milo she is extraordinarily old. Like Venus 
she has no teeth; like Venus she has white spots Wit through 
on the yellow surface of her body." In other similarity 
words, he begins with the idea that she must be very beauti- 
ful, and compares her with Venus, but he selects certain 
points of similarity that show just the opposite. Yet all the 
points that the poet mentions are perfectly true. He thus 
depicts something very ugly by comparing it with something 
very beautiful. 

We have described thus far, briefly of course, the most 
common forms of the technique of wit. As we have pointed 
out above, the process of condensation which we have noted 
in the technique of wit appears also in the formation of 
dreams. So, too, displacement, absurdity, indirect repre- 
sentation and expression through the opposite — all these are 
found also in the technique of dreams. It is the process of 
displacement that renders the dream so incomprehensible to 
us and thus prevents us from seeing in the dream only a 
continuation of our waking thoughts. The existence of the 
naive and absurd in the dream is the reason why people 
generally think that there is a deterioration of the psychic 
activities in the dream. We find also in the dream expression 
through the opposite, indirect expressions and other mechan- 
isms found in wit. We thus see how much alike in technique 
are the two psychic phenomena. 

When we inquire into wit, as concerns its tendencies, we 
find that it falls into two classes, purposeful wit, or that 



126 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

which shows definite aims, and harmless wit, or that which 
shows no particular aim. As an example of harmless wit, 
The Tenden- ta ^ e tne following : Smith asks Brown : "Have 
ci©sofwit y 0U seen t fo e new Murillo?" "No, I have not 
gone to the Zoological Garden for a year" This is only- 
understood, when we know that Murillo was a great Spanish 
painter. The name, however, sounds like that of some sort 
of animal. It is only purposeful wit that is apt to be met 
with resistance from hearers or persons concerned. A harm- 
less joke may be produced by witty words or witty thoughts, 
and any of the techniques described may serve to produce a 
purposeful witticism. Whenever wit is not harmless, that 
is, when it is purposeful and shows a definite aim, it has 
two tendencies: it is either hostile, aggressive, — or it is ob- 
scene, sexual. 

Take, for instance, the smutty joke. We may define it as 
a joke which brings into prominence some sexual facts or 
relations through speech. Such jokes are constantly read 
and heard in theatres and at the finest social gatherings. A 
typical example is the following: 

Mrs. Chatterton: "There's D'Aubrfs shocking picture, 
'Love in Arcady' They say it's a portrait of you. You 
don't mean to tell me you posed for it?" 

Mrs. Proudfit: "Certainly not! He must have painted 
it from memory." — (Judge, 1921.) 

Of course, rendering prominent something sexual, does 
not necessarily produce wit. A lecture on the anatomy of 
the sexual organs or on the physiology of reproduction need 
not necessarily provoke laughter. The smutty joke must 
fulfill certain conditions: In the first place, it must be 
directed toward a certain person who stimulates one sexually, 
and who becomes aware of the speaker's excitement by lis- 
tening to the smutty joke, and in turn becomes sexually 
excited. Very often, instead of becoming sexually excited 



WIT: ITS TECHNIQUE AND TENDENCIES 127 

one reacts with embarrassment or shame, which only shows 
a reaction against the excitement and thus signifies an 
admission of the same. The smutty joke was originally 
directed against the woman, a fact amply borne out in the 
histories of smutty wit. That nowadays, however, smutty 
jokes are mostly told among men, is only due to the fact that 
civilization and culture have rendered the original situation 
impossible of realization; this is counterbalanced, however, 
by the theatres and comic periodicals. The smutty joke is 
only an exhibition directed against a person to whom one is 
not sexually indifferent. Through the utterance of obscene 
words, the person attacked is excited to picture the parts of 
the body of the person in question, and is shown that the 
aggressor pictures the same thing. In other words, when a 
man seeks out a woman and tells her a sexual joke, it is 
because she stimulates him sexually, and he hopes by telling 
her the joke to stimulate her sexually, in turn. She may 
either laugh at it, which shows that she enjoys the situation, 
or become embarrassed, which to the person who makes the 
joke, means the same thing. The following is a good example 
of this kind of wit: 

Rub: — "A woman has just been arrested for carrying 
concealed weapons." 

Dub:— " Where ?"—( Judge, 1921.) 

There is no doubt that originally the motive of the sug- 
gestive risque joke was exhibitionism, — the pleasure of 
seeing the sexual displayed. As Freud has pointed out, one 
of the primitive components of our libido is the desire to 
see the sexual exposed. All animals exhibit during the 
mating season. And among human beings, it is a common 
observation that the greatest amount of showing-off on the 
part of men is done in the presence of women. There prob- 
ably would be no football games, or other college exhibitions, 
were it not for the fact that the participator expects to see 



128 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

at the event his best girl, or perhaps his sister or mother. 
This form of showing off is nothing but a sublimated activity 
of the infantile exhibitionism. The desire to see the sexual 
is probably only a substitute for the desire to touch the 
sexual which may be considered the primary pleasure. The 
libido for looking and touching is found in every person. 
We all know that touching the skin of the sexual object 
causes pleasure and excitement. The same holds true of 
looking which is analogous to touching. 

Sexual excitement is frequently awakened by optical im- 
pressions, and selection taking account of this fact makes the 
sexual object a thing of beauty. The fact that one animal 
is preferred to another is undoubtedly due to only one 
thing, — that the one looks better to the mate than the other. 
Of course, originally everything was done very frankly, and 
touching and looking were perfectly normal mechanisms. 
The introduction of clothing to cover the body, has only 
aroused a much greater sexual curiosity, and the individual 
constantly strives to supplement the sexual object by uncov- 
ering the hidden parts through his imagination. Looking and 
touching are intermediary sexual aims, that is, they are not 
ends in themselves, they merely lead to mating ; they conduce 
to the selection of the person who pleases the individual more 
than any other person. If one lingers very much at one of 
the intermediary stages, that is, if one is not using the 
partial component for the selection of a mate, but makes it his 
primary aim, he suffers from an abnormal sexual tendency 
which we regard as a perversion. That is to say, such a 
person fixes on the looking as the main sexual pleasure 
instead of directing it toward the normal sexual aim. He is 
what is designated as a voyeur or a "peeper." The desire to 
exhibit is readily seen in children and if not subjected to the 
normal sexual repression, it develops into a desire for ex- 
hibition, a common perversion in some grown up men. 



WIT: ITS TECHNIQUE AND TENDENCIES 129 

It is such partial components as exhibitionism and touch- 
ing, which, when repressed, still leave a certain amount of 
libido ungratified that men try to supplement through speech. 
By arousing a picture of his type in the woman the man 
leads rjer to merge into a corresponding excitement and the 
reaction of laughter or embarrassment thus produced in her 
gives him a certain amount of pleasure. We know from 
everyday experience that though the joke may have nothing 
in common with smut, the fact that it provokes laughter in 
others gives the person who made it a marked degree of 
pleasure. That is why we always seek an audience to tell 
a joke. The speech of courtship is certainly not regularly 
the smutty joke, but may very often pass over into one. We 
may say, then, that sexual aggression when inhibited ex- 
presses itself usually in speech. 

Another factor in determining the smutty wit is the un- 
yieldingness of the woman. Nature has purposely designed 
that the woman be passive in that regard, for it was intended 
that only the fittest and strongest should mate and survive. 
It is necessary for the woman not to yield too readily, for 
in this way she is able to have many men court her. Thus 
only the most persistent and strongest would finally be 
chosen. If the female of the species should yield immediately 
she would mate with any weakling, and a rather poor 
progeny would be the outcome. So that among human 
beings, as among animals, the woman, though she may be in 
love with the man, will always hold back; she does not do 
this deliberately, as you might think; it is quite an uncon- 
scious reaction. The only point is that sometimes women, 
particularly of a neurotic type, hold back too long and the 
man gets tired and finds another woman. I have many cases 
of women who suffered nervous breakdowns when the man 
left them after about two years of courtship. The ideal case 
for such resistance on the part of the woman usually results 



130 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

from the presence of another man whose presence excludes 
the immediate yielding of the woman. 

We may say then that the tendency wit requires three 
persons: first, the person who makes the wit; second, the 
person who is taken as the object of the hostile or sexual 
aggression ; and third, the person in whom the purpose of the 
with to produce pleasure is fulfilled. The way this is done 
may be described somewhat as follows : Just as soon as the 
first person meets with resistance on the part of the woman 
to the gratification of his libidinous impulse, he at once 
assumes a hostile attitude toward her and turns to the third 
person as to a sort of confederate. Through the obscene 
speech the first person is able to expose the woman before 
the third person who as a passive hearer derives pleasure 
from the easy gratification of his own libido. The wit 
enables, therefore, the first person to gratify his original 
lewd or hostile craving, despite the hindrance which stands 
in the way ; it enables him to draw pleasure from an other- 
wise forbidden source. What the hindrance is is not hard 
to see. It is nothing less than the higher degree of social 
propriety which makes it hard for the woman, and to a less 
degree, for the man, to countenance the bare sexual. With 
the advance of civilization, the force of repression became 
correspondingly stronger and what was once conceived as 
pleasurable now appears as inacceptable, and is rejected by 
all the psychic forces. But the human psyche finds absolute 
renunciation difficult and it is through the medium of the 
tendency wit that we are still able to enjoy many of those 
primary pleasures that civilization and the higher education 
have found inacceptable. We may say accordingly that the 
obscene delicate witticism heard among people of culture and 
refinement and the coarse obscene joke of the ill-bred both 
have the same source of pleasure. The only difference is that 
owing to cultural development, the coarse obscene joke 



WIT: ITS TECHNIQUE AND TENDENCIES 131 

causes shame or disgust, the obscene delicate witticism incites 
us to laughter because wit has come to its aid. At a gathering 
of ladies and gentlemen of the highest culture, it is not at 
all uncommon for one of the company to make a joke so 
risque that were we to examine the actual thought behind 
it, we would in all probability be terribly shocked, and order 
the person out of the house; but because it is given in the 
form of a witticism, every one is fascinated and laughs. 

It also frequently happens that such wit is produced by 
the most cultured persons in an involuntary and unconscious 
way. A gentleman whose words I have no reason to doubt 
vouches for the truth of the following story : A well known 
clergyman addressed a women's club and was very profuse 
in his praise of the ladies of the club and the sex in general. 
Among other things he said: "As one who knows the 
frailties of mankind I am repeatedly astounded at the 
strength of women. In the face of the terrible temptations 
to which women are constantly subjected it is wonderful at 
the force they display, yes, it is wonderful that you don't 
fall, but it is also wonderful when you do fall." The last 
sentence was uttered unconsciously. The ladies were highly 
amused but the clergyman assured my friend that he was 
never more embarrassed in his life. It was an echo from 
his unconscious or as he himself put it, it was the devil in 
him who spoke. For the devil is only a personification of our 
own primitive impulses. Praising the women for not falling 
was only a reaction to his repressed wishes while he stood 
there exhibiting through speech before women. 

When we examine the part the wit plays in the service of 
the hostile tendency, we at once meet with similar conditions. 
Here, too, we have been taught from time immemorial to 
repress our anger ; not only are we not allowed to use violence 
against our enemy, but we are taught that it is bad form 
even to use insulting language. With the advance of civiliza- 



132 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

tion our hostile feelings, like our sexual cravings, have had 
to be repressed more and more. And though we have not 
yet reached the point where we are ready to turn our left 
cheek when we are smitten on the right, we have on the 
whole made considerable progress in controlling our hostile 
disposition. To be sure, aggression in conventional form is 
still the vis a tergo of life, and although the early Christian 
reaction to the then existing pagan sadism was a masochistic 
exaltation of humility and suffering, the Christian nations 
have only formally subscribed to it, they have never practiced 
it. Indeed those races who actually practice the virtues of 
humility and non-resistance have been treated with contempt 
by the leading Christian nations. As the Yonkers Statesman 
puts it : "It's alright to sympathise with the underdog in a 
fight, but a fellow would be a fool to bet on him." But as 
society forbids us to express most of our feelings in action, 
we have developed, however, as in the case of the sexual 
aggression, a new mode of invective, by means of which we 
are able to enlist the third person as a confederate. Through 
wit we are able to humble and ridicule our enemy and thus 
obtain the pleasure of his defeat through the laughter of 
the third person, the passive hearer. 

The wit of hostile aggression, then, gives us the means to 
make our enemy ridiculous, and wins over to our side the 
third person even though he may not at all be convinced of 
our position. The anecdote of the two lawyers mentioned 
above illustrates the process admirably. By way of another 
illustration take the following example which I have cited 
i in my book : 1 

Wendell Phillips, according to the recent biography by Dr. 
Lorenzo Sears, was, on one occasion, lecturing in Ohio, and 
while on a railroad journey going to keep one of his appoint- 

1 Psychoanalysis, Its Theories and Applications. 3rd Edit. W. B. 
Saunders, Philadelphia. 



WIT: ITS TECHNIQUE AND TENDENCIES 133 

ments, he met in the car a number of clergymen returning 
from some sort of convention. One of the ministers felt 
called upon to approach Mr. Phillips, and asked him, "Are 
you Mr. Phillips?" "I am, sir." "Are you trying to free 
the niggers?" "Yes, sir, I am an abolitionist." "Well, why 
do you preach your doctrines up here? Why don't you go 
over into Kentucky ?" "Excuse me," said Wendell Phillips, 
"are you a preacher?" "I am, sir." "Are you trying to save 
souls from hell?" "Yes, sir, that's my business. "Well, why 
don't you go there ?" — You can see how a witticism like this 
serves more than disarming a man. The average individual 
approached in this fashion would have in all likelihood re- 
taliated with some such invective as, "Go to hell," but Wen- 
dell Phillips used the tendency wit, and expressed in this way 
exactly, though in an indirect, brilliant way, just what he 
wished to say. The minister's behavior was offensive, yet 
Wendell Phillips, as a man of culture, could not defend 
himself in the manner of an ill-bred person. The only al- 
ternative that was left him was to take the affront in silence, 
but wit came to his aid and enabled him to turn the tables on 
his assailant. By its means he not only disarmed his op- 
ponent but fascinated the other clergymen to such an extent 
that they were won over to his side. 

In summing up it may be said that the main function of 
wit is to produce pleasure from sources that are otherwise 
inaccessible to us. Perhaps the clearest demonstration of this 
is seen in the fact that smutty wit is so often enjoyed by 
elderly respectable men whose position in society prevents 
them from giving vent to their love outlets, and by persons 
who as a result of physical or mental factors are incapable 
of leading a normal love life. The greatest purveyors of 
smutty jokes belong to this class. This is clearly the case 
in tendency wit but the same is also true of harmless wit. 
When we laugh over Johnny's answer to his teacher when 



134 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

he names the "Jail-bird" as the most common bird in cap- 
tivity, we obtain pleasure through our feeling of superiority. 
When an audience bursts out laughing when a lady in the 
cast shouts "Go to hell" it shows its resentment to the con- 
ventional repression constantly forced upon it by society. 
Just because a woman is supposed to be more delicate in 
expression than a gentleman one is sure to be happy when 
she uses a profane expletive on the stage. It represents 
the height of social violations. So also one is terribly jarred 
to hear that no less a personage than Abraham Lincoln was 
very fond of vulgar wit, a fact which gave his biographers 
no little amount of worry. They seem to be puzzled at this 
crass incompatibility and find it extremely difficult to explain 
it. Thus Mr. Leonard Swett, Lincoln's political associate 
and later a United States Attorney General, states : "Almost 
any man who will tell a vulgar story has in a degree a vulgar 
mind. But it was not so with him; with all his purity of 
character and exalted morality and sensibility, which no man 
can doubt, when hunting for wit he had no ability to dis- 
criminate between the vulgar and refined substances from 
which he extracted it. It was the wit he was after, the pure 
jewel ; and he would pick it up out of the mud or dirt just 
as readily as from the parlor table." Lord Charnwood, from 
whose work on Abraham Lincoln the above is taken, states : 
"In any case his best remembered utterances of this order 
were least fit for print, were both wise and incomparably 
witty, and in any case they did not prevent grave gentlemen 
who marvelled at them rather uncomfortably from receiving 
the deep impression of what they called his pure-minded- 
ness." The trouble with most biographers is that they always 
leave out what they consider the un-nice parts of their ideals, 
forgetting that no matter how exalted a human being may 
become he is still very human in all his thoughts and actions. 
Abraham Lincoln was essentially a very aggressive man, he 



WIT: ITS TECHNIQUE AND TENDENCIES 135 

was a fighter and known as such ; any one reading his life can 
readily see how this "naughty" aggressive boy brought up 
in wild pioneer days had to overcome enormous primitive 
forces to become sublimated into the ideal being we know 
him to be. Strong and aggressive he remained all his life 
time, and we know that aggression in life also means sexual 
aggression. This is just what one fails to find in Abraham 
Lincoln. Unlike so many other great personages there was 
no sex gossip about him. On the other hand, those who 
understand the psychic forces of human reactions cannot fail 
to see many things in his life which point to strong psycho- 
sexual repression. Perhaps by way of contrast one is forcibly 
reminded of another ideal character. I am referring to King 
David, who is not only so regarded by the Jews but also by 
Christians and Mohammedans. The great psalmist was also 
a very aggressive and pious man, but at the height of his 
glory he did not hesitate to commit the sexual crime with 
Mrs. Uriah, the lawful wife of one of his active generals 
whom he ordered to be killed in order to escape the wrath of 
this outraged husband. Well, the Lord sent his prophet 
Nathan, who gave him a good calling down for it. David 
wrote a psalm which has been repeated ever since by devout 
sinners, and then married the lady in question. Nowadays 
not even a successful king could get away so lightly with such 
an affair. Psalms or no psalms, all modern men must re- 
nounce much of their sex aggression. Lincoln wrote the 
famous address at the dedication of the Gettysburg National 
Cemetery, he could not write any psalms because he was not 
conscious of committing adultery. But yet he was a very 
repressed being and one of his outlets was coprohilic wit 
of aggression. Perhaps if the biographers would have kept 
a record of those pithy but indelicate Lincoln jokes it might 
have helped some equally minded but repressed individuals 
to leave behind great names instead of repeat King David's 



i 3 6 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

psalm and remain disgraced forever. For in order to be 
happy one must nowadays get some substitute for reality. 
The substitute may in itself be a bit shocking but it is much 
better for the individual and society than to follow reality. 
Which recalls the following joke: 

A missionary was shipwrecked near what he imagined 
was a cannibal island. He was in mortal terror of the 
savages so that he remained in the thickest part of the forest. 
One day he suddenly heard voices, he became terrified, think- 
ing that his end was near. He listened tensely and heard: 
"What in hell did you play this card for!" He got on his 
knees, raised his hands in prayer and said: "Thank the 
Lord they are Christians." 

Now the missionary recognized the Christians by the fact 
that they cursed and gambled, the cannibals could do no 
such things. But then the cannibal needs no such substitutes. 
He lives his natural life without much repression. He kills 
or is killed as the case may be, so that he needs no cursing 
as substitutes, he does not expect anything for nothing so he 
needs no gambling. He is just like the child in this regard; 
when the child begins to develop a sense of humor and begins 
to curse it is already alive to the burdens of civilization ; it 
is already repressing and compromises on substitutes. 
Smutty jokes are nothing but substitutes for natural sex. 
For years I have asked my patients to tell the best jokes they 
ever heard. I don't ask this question until I am sure that 
the patient will tell me exactly what comes to his mind. 
Most of the answers were obtained from ladies and gentle- 
men of the highest type. I have read some of the answers 
before a group of scientific men and they enjoyed hearing 
them, but they all agreed with me that, like most of the 
Lincoln witticisms, not one of these jokes was fit to print. 

When one watches the trend of the times one observes 
that as soon as a new taboo comes into existence one is sure 



WIT: ITS TECHNIQUE AND TENDENCIES 137 

to hear all sorts of jokes cracked about it. It is for the same 
reason that government and marriage furnish so much ma- 
terial for wit. Both are artificial institutions which the 
average individual finds hard to bear, and as marriage, which 
is only a phase of sex, touches more vitally the individual 
than any other cultural institution, it is the principal theme 
in wit. Although long accepted as an absolutely necessary 
state in the life of every normal person it is forever criticized 
and blamed. The following illustration sums up the situa- 
tion: 

Same Symptoms 

Simpson (greeting his old friend) : 'Why, Jones, it's 
ages since I saw you last. Married now, aren't you?" 

Jones: "No, no, old man, it's not that. Just business 
worry and nerves." — {The Bulletin — Sydney.) 

In describing some of the more important mechanisms of 
wit, my main purpose was to pave the way for the psycho- 
logical mechanisms of the dream. There are many resem- 
blances between the two psychic phenomena, both in technique 
and formation. Such mechanism as condensation, displace- 
ment, etc., play no small part in the technique of wit, and 
as we shall see in the following chapters, they are found 
also in the technique of dreams. We regard them as quite 
natural processes in wit only because we are so much more 
accustomed to wit than to dreams. The formation of wit 
resembles also the formation of dreams: both are uncon- 
scious psychic activities. Wit, like the dream, is an invol- 
untary mental occurrence. That is why one cannot tell a 
moment before what joke one is going to crack. The above 
cited witticism made by the divine addressing the ladies' 
club nicely illustrates this mechanism. 

But there are also some differences between the dream and 
the wit. The most important of these is that wit is a social 
product ; it often requires three persons, and in its tendency, 



1 38 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

always requires the participation of at least one other person. 
The dream, on the other hand, is a perfect individual psychic 
function, it is of the most personal character and has no 
interest whatever for the outside world; one likes to hear 
a good joke but unless one knows the meaning of dreams, he 
is bored to distraction when they are recited by the fellow 
boarder at the breakfast table. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE DREAM: ITS FUNCTION AND MOTIVE 

"I believe it to be true that dreams are the true interpreters of our 
inclinations, but there is art required to sort and understand them." 

— Montaigne. 

Hitherto we have dwelt on those mechanisms that we 
find both in the normal and abnormal spheres, the mechan- 
isms that may be readily explained on a normal basis. We 
shall now enter upon the subject of dreams, which, though 
observed in every normal person, present nevertheless a 
departure from normal conscious processes. The dream has 
always been a subject of great interest and from time im- 
memorial has received considerable speculation. We find 
allusion to it in all the earliest writings, to say nothing of 
the literature of modern times in which it receives an ever 
increasing amount of attention. 

It is noteworthy what a variety of ideas one meets in the 
literature on the subject. Some of them, I am glad to say, 
show some signs of logic; the late literature is particularly 
useful and instructive in that definite problems have been 
investigated. Most of the material, however, is woefully 
deficient of any clear or definite conception of the nature or 
meaning of the dream. You may all know that the ancients 
attributed it to some altogether external force ; it was either 
a demon or God himself that was responsible for it. The 
scriptures tell us that "What God is about to do, he showeth 
unto Pharaoh." To the Greeks there were good and evil 
deities that presided over it. These views have come down 

139 



140 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

to us traditionally, and we may say that the present popular 
belief in dreams differs in no respect from that of the 
classical Greeks and the ancient Egyptians. It is also note- 
worthy that the laity still continues to believe in their im- 
portance. In Europe it is quite common for people gambling 
on lotteries to have a little dream book which gives both 
interpretations and corresponding numbers. They play the 
numbers corresponding to the dream, and if they win, it is 
the dream to which they attribute their success. 

Everybody dreams, and those who think they do not dream 
may be easily convinced to the contrary by a very simple 
External experiment. Make up your mind on retiring 
internal ^ iat ^ y ou ^ ave a dream you will recall it, and 
an? 11111 y° u w *^ undoubtedly be convinced the next 

Dreams morning that you are no exception to the rule. 
I have known many people who, at first, insisted that they 
do not dream but who soon had to admit that they were 
mistaken. 

There are those who believe that dreams are caused by a 
disturbance of the stomach. How grossly untrue this con- 
ception is may readily be seen from a careful study and 
observation of one's dreams. The condition of the stomach 
has nothing to do with the psychic determinant of the dream, 
though it is true that the dream may be more easily recalled 
if the sleep is disturbed. For it is then that the dreamer 
is thrown into a state commonly designated as the dreamy, 
or crepuscular, state which is most conducive to the remem- 
bering of the dream. This fact accounts for the popular 
conception: people generally have observed that they dream 
when their sleep is disturbed and have, therefore, associated 
the origin of the phenomenon with the condition of the 
stomach. 

There is no doubt, however, that internal and external 
stimuli give rise to dreams. Attend, for instance, to your 



THE DREAM: ITS FUNCTION AND MOTIVE 141 

alarm clock and you will find usually on awaking that you 
have dreamed. But these stimuli do not determine the 
psychic content of the dream, they merely serve as dream 
inciters. It is a well known fact, borne out by the experi- 
ments of many investigators in this field, that the same 
stimulus may incite different dreams at different times and 
in different individuals. Thus with an alarm clock acting as 
a stimulus one person may see himself going to church on 
an early Sunday morning and hear the church bells ringing, 
while another person may see a wagon full of tin cans and 
an automobile colliding with it. What is highly significant 
to note here is that a short stimulus may produce a dream 
which will often require a half hour to describe. 

There was an interesting discussion a number of years 
ago in the Revue Philosophique in Paris on a dream that the 
dreamer described as follows: It was during the French 
Revolution; he saw himself present at a session of the 
National Convention; many royal personages were brought 
before it, tried and condemned to die. He could see how 
they were being led away on the cabriolets, placed on the 
guillotine and beheaded. Suddenly he himself was arrested, 
having been accused of some crime. He appeared before 
the Convention, defended himself, remembering the speech 
that he made, how he argued with the public prosecutor, and 
how finally he was sentenced to death. He was hurried 
off on the tumbrel, then taken from the prison to the 
guillotine. His head was placed on the block, he felt the 
blade strike the back of his neck, and presently he awoke 
to find that a board of the bed fell and struck him on the 
back of the neck. 

The question that naturally arises here is : "How is it that 
so short a stimulus produced so long a drea.ni? How long 
did the dream take, how was it possible to crowd all that 
material which required so much time to write down, into a 



142 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

space of apparently a few seconds?" The board struck him, 
he awoke, and remembered the dream. Many explanations 
were presented, but with the exception of Prof. Freud 
who has succeeded in unravelling the secret of the dream 
generally, none of the writers really explained the mechan- 
ism. Analysis reveals that the dreamer was a Frenchman. 
As a boy he read the French Revolution, and like all boys, 
lived right through this stirring and romantic period. I have 
already drawn your attention, I think, in another connection 
to the psychic mechanism of identification, by virtue of which 
we read ourselves into a situation of marked affective con- 
tent or live through the life of an individual whom we love 
or admire. In reading we usually select the hero or heroine 
upon whom we fix this marked interest; sometimes, too, I 
am bold enough to say, we may even identify ourselves with 
the villain. We feel deeply with whatever individual we 
identify ourselves with; we are with him in his moments of 
profound sorrow and joy, we live his life, as it were. It is 
nothing unusual to see one weep in the theater at some 
serious turn of fortune in the story of our "favorite" char- 
acter. This mode of projecting ourselves into the lives of 
others, this profound and powerful sense of sympathy with 
their deeper experiences is quite unconscious and continues 
throughout life. A little boy reading about Indians may 
identify himself with the brave and virtuous Indian, or 
with the scout. Many women have come under my notice 
whose whole course of life was determined by a certain book 
or series of books by a particular author ; unconsciously and 
sometimes even consciously they governed their lives accord- 
ing to the characters depicted in the story, particularly ac- 
cording to some special character that strongly appealed to 
them. Now the identification mechanism enables us to 
endow every scene, every situation that appeals to us with 
a certain emotional warmth and tone. We may only seem- 



THE DREAM: ITS FUNCTION AND MOTIVE 143 

ingly forget a situation that once had profoundly stirred us, 
but it always remains in the unconscious ; it has rooted itself 
in our inmost thoughts and feelings, it has become a part of 
us. Any conscious or unconscious association may bring it 
back to the mind with all its former vividness. That is 
what happened in the case of the dreamer. As a boy he read 
the story of the Revolution with breathless interest. The 
unfortunates who were guillotined particularly impressed 
him; he absorbed to the full the pathos, the horror, the 
terrible meaning of the situation. And now when the board 
fell on the back of his neck, it recalled, by association, the 
whole situation, in all its vividness and with all its attending 
emotions. The thoughts and feelings associated with the 
execution were registered in the mind and were now brought 
to the surface by this external stimulus. The action was 
similar to what we find in the theater: the stage manager 
pushes the button and the scene shifter brings on the ap- 
propriate scene. The external stimulus, by an accidental 
association, served to bring into play a whole group of 
formerly accentuated ideas and emotions. 

Internal stimuli act in the same way. If, for instance, 
you experience certain sensations in your stomach to-day 
that you had five years ago, the likelihood is that your dreams 
will have a resemblance in some way to those of the former 
period. When we bear this in mind, we do not have to 
resort to supernatural causes to account for the fact that 
some people can foretell by a certain dream that they are 
going to be sick. Long before one is conscious of his sick- 
ness, long before, for instance, the mucous membrane of the 
nose and throat becomes so swollen that it begins to run and 
ache, the congestion starts and arouses associations in the 
mind which recall some similar situation in the past. That 
is enough to cause the individual to dream of the sickness. 
One woman actually had the same type of dream every time 



144 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

before she got a cold in the head, as she called it. We 
observe this phenomenon under different forms in every-day 
life. Patients in speaking to me of certain ailments, let us 
say, periodic headaches, may often tell me how glad they 
are that they did not have the headache for the last three 
months. I am not at all pleased to hear this, for I know 
that the fact that they thought of it is already an indication 
that it is coming on, but that it has not as yet manifested 
itself to consciousness. To be sure, I learn the next day 
that the headache has arrived. A disease does not manifest 
itself suddenly; long before the person consciously knows 
that he is sick, he experiences, though vaguely, some feeling 
of depression or uneasiness that carries with it a sense of 
foreboding to those who are ignorant of the psychological 
significance of the condition. That undoubtedly accounts 
for the fact that both among primitive and modern people 
the sneeze was always greeted with some formula that sig- 
nified the wish to avert evil. Undoubtedly primitive man 
learned empirically that whenever he began to sneeze some 
disease would follow, because practically all serious diseases 
begin with coryza. One has a right to believe that primitive 
man had less chance to overcome such diseases as pneumonia 
and other infectious or contagious diseases than his modern 
brother, and as sneezing was invariably followed by disease 
which often ended fatally, primitive man naturally tried to 
stop it through incantations. I feel that this really explains 
the sneezing ceremonial in a much simpler way and is nearer 
to the truth than the explanation offered by Dr. Wallace in 
his interesting dissertation on "The Romance and the 
Tragedy of Sneezing." 1 

In physical, as well as in mental life, a certain stimulus 
is required before a certain reaction is produced. I am sure 
that those of you who have studied academic psychology 

1 Scientific Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 6. 



THE DREAM: ITS FUNCTION AND MOTIVE 145 

will recall the Weber-Fechner law of the relation of stimulus 
to intensity of sensation, — the intensity of the one being 
directly proportional to the intensity of the other. One of 
the experiments that we perform in the examination of 
patients, particularly when we wish to determine their degree 
of attention, is to expose pictures to them very rapidly, the 
exposure lasting only a few seconds. We then ask them 
to tell us what they observed. A great many will declare 
at first that they saw nothing, but upon urging them to tell 
you what comes to their mind, they invariably will mention 
something that has a more or less fundamental resemblance 
to the picture. I show a person a Japanese scene, and he 
declares at first that he saw nothing. I urge him to reflect, 
and he soon replies, "Well, I think of China." You see that 
he noted the resemblance, although he has not consciously 
seen the picture. In order to be heard, I do not have to 
speak to you here, for instance, as loudly as I would have to 
in the subway. But if I whisper here, you may not hear 
me, but the stimulus is present, the sound is here. In other 
words, I may say that before you see, you have already 
seen, before you hear, you have already heard, but the stimu- 
lus was not sufficiently strong to make you feel conscious of 
the sensation. 

Incidentally, I may say that if you remember this impor- 
tant law in psychology, you will be able to understand many 
of the occurrences to which people generally attribute so 
much importance. You are often asked to explain, for 
example, how it is that when you talk of Mr. Brown, he is 
sure to appear. The fact is that you either saw or heard 
Mr. Brown before you talked about him. Let us remember 
that our senses tell us much more than we generally sup- 
pose, and though we have little confidence in them, they 
still operate, and render us knowledge long before we are 



146 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

really conscious of it. You may be on the avenue speaking 
to your friend, when somebody passes who has aroused 
certain associations in your brain. You begin to talk about 
him, although you have not consciously seen him, and sud- 
denly, to your great surprise, he stands there before you in 
his own flesh and blood. "Talk of the devil, and he is sure 
to appear." But he has been there in your field of vision 
long before you actually saw him. 

But I may be reminded: "I talked about a man while 
being in the house and to be sure, he came in." Usually we 
can hear the person approaching, and I still have to find the 
person who knows somebody well, but cannot recognize the 
latter 's footsteps. At home we can always tell who is coming, 
whether mother, father, or some other intimate person. We 
may also explain on this basis such occurrences as find ex- 
pression in the following characteristic remark: "How do 
you account for my receiving a letter from a woman whom 
I have not heard from for a long time, and strange, I talked 
about her only yesterday?" When you investigate you find 
that there is a similar mechanism involved, that the situation 
presents nothing at all mysterious or psychic. You have 
established a certain connection in your mind between that 
person and yourself. At about that period you think of a 
sudden of that individual by virtue of a psychic process to 
which I have already drawn your attention under the term 
of "Post-hypnotic suggestion ;" that is to say, at the expira- 
tion of a certain time, a certain impression received in the 
past will recur, and revive an old association. 

The underlying nature and meaning of the dream was 
not known until Prof. Freud propounded his theories. All 
sorts of interpretations were presented but there was no 
general, fundamental conception. In analyzing his patients 
Freud found that they all dreamed and the question pre- 
sented itself, "Are dreams psychic mechanisms or do they 



THE DREAM: ITS FUNCTION AND MOTIVE 147 

represent sheer nonsense, having no relation to the in- 
dividual's psychic life?" The answer involved a funda- 
mental conception; everything both in physical and mental 
life has a reason ; as in the physical, so in the psychic sphere, 
there is nothing that has not some function. We 

The 

have tears, not merely to weep, but to keep the Dream 
eyes constantly moist to wash them; otherwise Guardian 
they would be coated with dust that would make ° S eep 
it impossible for us to see. We have sweat glands in order to 
equalize the temperature of the body, and saliva to assist in 
deglution and digestion generally. In the same way every 
psychic function has its raison d'etre. The question then, 
was "Why do we dream ?" He thoroughly investigated the 
literature on the subject but it was not there that the answer 
was to be found. It was only as he delved deeper and 
deeper into the symptom and saw its profound intimate 
connection with the dream, that he was approaching a solu- 
tion of the problem. He began to see that the dream is a 
perfect psychic mechanism, that it is not at all arbitrary, but 
that it has a definite relation to the individual's psychic life. 
The deeper he probed the dream, the more did its wisdom 
and underlying senses of order grow upon him, until finally 
he formulated the thesis that "a dream is the hidden fulfill- 
ment of a repressed wish." In other words, a dream is a 
wish that the individual could not realize in the waking state. 
Now before dilating on this conclusion, let me go back to 
the function of the dream. During the day we all think of 
a host of things; I am sure I am not exaggerating when I 
say that hundreds and hundreds of thoughts run through 
the mind; they glide by and we are not even conscious of 
them. But there are always some problems coming up that 
absorb us. It is well known that if any question should con- 
tinue to engage our attention to a marked degree, it would 
be impossible for us to fall asleep. We are all aware that 



148 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

any strong or poignant emotion, whether it be one of pleasure 
or pain, may keep one awake. An individual who is elated 
does not wish to sleep, and for that matter, cannot sleep, be- 
cause his senses are too alive and high-strung. To sleep it is 
necessary to exclude all sensations from all organs. We go 
to bed so that we may relax; the lights are turned out in 
order to exclude all sensory stimulations. Experiment has 
demonstrated that sleep is usually induced when sensations 
are thus excluded. All sensory impressions have been shut 
out from animals and sleep usually followed. Thus, when 
there is any problem engrossing the mind, the tendency is not 
to fall asleep. Now what are the things that would keep us 
awake ? They are usually those that we have not been able to 
attain, or those we have not been able to solve. One works out 
a problem, thinking to himself : "If I can put that through, 
I will be fortunate : my future will be assured. If I cannot 
execute it, I do not know what I am to do: I will lose my 
position and will not be able to take care of my family." 
He goes to bed and dwells on the problem. He would 
probably continue with it throughout the whole night were it 
not for his wish to sleep. What actually happens then is 
that the mind takes the problem and weaves it into a dream. 
The dream then realizes the wish and thus makes sleep pos- 
sible. 

In every-day life we know that once a question is solved, 
there is no further need for preoccupation with it. It is 
merely a matter of how to solve an existing problem. A 
child goes to sleep, crying; it wants a doll. The mother 
quickly appeases it by granting the wish. So far so good; 
but this same child has now grown older and wants some- 
thing that the mother cannot so easily secure. Now it has 
to go without it, but as it wishes to sleep, the problem is 
solved in a different way. Nature assures our rest by 
seemingly granting us our wishes. The child now dreams 



THE DREAM: ITS FUNCTION AND MOTIVE 149 

that it has obtained what it was refused in reality. Like- 
wise, if you should go to bed to-night after eating a very 
salty supper, you will undoubtedly desire water at night, but 
instead of waking up, particularly if the room is cold, you 
will dream that you are slaking your thirst with some re- 
freshing water, or if you are more fortunately constituted, 
with some stronger and more inviting beverage. This is a 
very common "convenience" dream. If you retire hungry, 
you will invariably dream that you are eating. I spoke to 
Professor Macmillan who went with Peary to the North 
Pole and he told me what great pleasure they had experi- 
enced in their dreams. The reason is quite clear. These men 
who had known the delicacies of New York restaurants, were 
compelled to live on pemmican and a simple Arctic Zone diet. 
They dreamed of the things they were anxious to have. They 
smoked fine cigars and drank highballs in their sleep. Chil- 
dren invariably show that they dream of those things that 
they cannot have in the waking state. Children's dreams and 
the so-called convenience dreams of adults are thus open 
wishes. When the dreams, however, are not of this type, the 
situation is quite different, and it is here that we encounter 
serious difficulties in understanding them. 

To appreciate how the dream acts as the guardian of 
sleep, consider with me the following case of a business man 
who had been with his firm for a number of years, whose 
ability was recognized, but for whom there was manifestly 
no real place in the proposed reorganization of the business. 
In order to remain in the new organization he must show that 
he can be a factor in it, that there is a special department 
that he can manage; otherwise he realizes that he will have 
to lose his position. He evolves a scheme which he is to 
present the next morning before the board of trustees. He 
goes to bed, constantly thinking of the matter : he sees him- 
self before the board, he anticipates the arguments of his 



150 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

two opponents, he wonders what best reply to make. The 
clock strikes, one, two, and three, but he is still awake. Finally 
exhausted, he falls asleep and has the following dream: 
He is swimming in the New York Bay on a board which he 
is able to manipulate just as if it were an excellent motor 
boat. The steamers are going and coming, but he is by no 
means disconcerted: every time a big boat approaches, he 
very deftly steers out of its course, or rides over the waves 
with ease and pleasure. He is enjoying the swim immensely. 
He awoke with a feeling of satisfaction. When he came to 
me the next day, he wondered what sort of wish his dream 
could represent. I reminded him at once that the dream is 
not always an open wish but a hidden realization of a re- 
pressed wish. The interpretation is simple enough. He 
was to appear the next day, as I said, before the board of 
trustees to lay before it his plans for the reorganization of 
the business ; he knew that unless he could convince them to 
accept his scheme, he would lose his position. He knew 
furthermore, that some members of the board were antago- 
nistic to him and would raise objections regardless of what- 
ever plans he proposed ; on the other hand, he was aware that 
most of the members were favorably disposed toward him. 
It was some time before he fell asleep, because his mind was 
constantly dwelling on the whole situation. He would have 
remained awake throughout the night, but as he was tired and 
wished to sleep, the disturbing problem had to be solved in 
some way. This could only be effected by weaving his 
emotionally accentuated ideas into a dream which represented 
his wish as accomplished. When I asked him what his 
dream recalled he told me he used to engage, as a boy, in 
swimming races on boards on the Ohio River, in which he 
was highly proficient. And so you see, because he was 
thinking of how to control the board, a situation in the past 
presented itself to him in which he actually managed boards 



THE DREAM: ITS FUNCTION AND MOTIVE 151 

skilfully and won. The mechanism of "double entendre," 
double meaning of a word, reproduced in his mind a scene 
from boyhood in which he had perfect control of a board. 
It was a different board, to be sure, but that made little 
difference in the unconscious, the important thing was that 
he was able to guide it through all obstacles. The dream not 
only enabled him to sleep but the pain of to-morrow's un- 
certainty was replaced by pleasant feelings of his remote 
past. Thus the dream was the producer as well as the 
guardian of sleep. 

From the above dream we may see the first difficulty in 
dream analysis, viz., that the language of the dream is visual : 
we see images, we express ideas in symbols. Whereas in 
the waking state, "to see" is used in the literal as well as the 
more or less figurative sense of "to understand," in the sleep- 
ing state we use it entirely in its literal significance. We do 
not think in the dream in any logical sense, we merely see a 
succession of images, which had been stored in the mind in 
the past. It would have been otherwise impossible for the 
dreamer who dreamed about the French Revolution to con- 
dense, as he did, so much thought in a few seconds ; what the 
dream really did was to revive pictures in his mind that he 
actually gleaned from history books or that his own imagina- 
tion may have created, while he was immersed in his read- 
ing. 

Abstract ideas in dreams can only be represented graphi- 
cally. In this respect the dreamer acts like the child or the 
artist. I have asked many people how they would repre- 
sent, for instance, the abstract idea of charity on canvas or 
in marble, and I have never found two individuals who gave 
me exactly the same description. It is noteworthy that they 
always describe the first thing that comes to their mind. 
One person may see a haggard, decrepit woman, in a shawl, 
holding out her hand, and a well dressed lady giving her 



152 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

coins; another may see a little girl, ragged and frozen, 
begging alms, and a man pausing to help her. And so the 
pictures vary with each individual. But the significant thing 
that analysis reveals is that all these people invariably re- 
produce something that they had formerly experienced. 
When I asked, for instance, the person that gave me the 
first representation above to tell me what it suggested to him, 
he recalled a trip in Italy where he actually witnessed many 
such scenes in which an American woman would pause to 
give alms to some Italian beggar. Everybody has his own 
memory images for abstract ideas, which, although uncon- 
scious, have their peculiar, special meaning to him, and are 
represented in dreams in their original form. 

Thus one of my patients associated in his dream a certain 
woman whom he knew with grief, because he thought of her 
as a "funeral bird" in the waking state. Likewise one may 
utilize in the dream any situation representing in his mind 
some idea or emotion, as a symbol for a certain feeling a 
certain "Stimmung." That is why it is wrong to attempt to 
interpret a dream with a knowledge of what the particular 
image represents in the particular person's mind. There 
are, to be sure, some dreams that evince ethnic symbols to 
which definite meanings may be ascribed, but you have to be 
extremely careful even with those; they may have an al- 
together different significance in different individuals. In 
other words, the meaning of the dream cannot usually be 
known unless the dreamer is well known to the analyst. 

The following dream is a fine example of how abstract 
thoughts are visualized concretely in dreams. Miss S. 
dreamed that she "passed a very tall building from which 
smoke came out. Then some flames burst forth. I could 
feel the awful heat." 

Analysis: Miss S. is not very fortunate in love. She 
is well educated, intelligent, and good-looking, but a little too 



THE DREAM: ITS FUNCTION AND MOTIVE 153 

reserved to suit the average young man. She had many 
admirers, but for some reason or other the eligible man either 
failed to appear, or made little progress toward matrimony. 
The day before the dream she visited a friend, who jokingly 
teased her about T., one of her admirers. She heard that 
he was a "steady caller," as she put it, and wanted to know 
when the engagement would be announced, and so on. Miss 
S. was embarrassed, and protested that there was no truth 
in the rumor, that it was nothing but idle gossip. Secretly, 
however, she cherished the thought that T. might marry her. 
The conversation ended with the significant remark from 
her friend, "Where there's smoke there must be fire." 
The dream fulfills her wish. The very tall building is her- 
self, — she is very tall. She sees the smoke, then the flames, 
and can feel the awful heat. The saying, where there is 
smoke there is fire, is simply visualized by the dream, and as 
the dreamer is the chief actor of the dream, she is the tall 
building. A building or house, as is well known, is an old 
symbol for the body. We often speak of the body as the 
house we live in. Fire and heat are symbols of love. 

An interesting little example of this identification of love 
with fire is found in one of Maupassant's short stories, "Al- 
ways Lock the Door," which many of you perhaps have read. 
An old bachelor relates how his first real adventure in love 
miscarried by his failure to lock the door. He invited his 
fair friend to his private room one day, but to his great 
distress, found that he had no fire because the chimney 
smoked. "The very evening before," he goes on to tell us, 
"I had spoken to my landlord, a retired shopkeeper, about it, 
and he had promised that he would send for the chimney 
sweep in a day or two to get it all put to right. As soon as 
she came in I said, 'There is no fire because my chimney 
smokes/ She did not even appear to hear me but stam- 
mered, 'That does not matter, I have. . . / " 



154 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

Apart from the fact that the language of the dream is 
visual, another difficulty in dream analysis is that when the 
dream wishes to represent something hidden, it resorts to the 
same mechanisms that we use in the waking state when we 
wish to express something indirectly ; that is to say, it has re- 
course to the "double entendre," double meaning, distortions 
and similar mechanisms. I need not give you examples ; all 
you have to do is to think of the theatre, of the different 
witticisms you hear and read; you will then realize that in 
a sense nobody expresses himself truthfully. Writers fre- 
quently resort to all sorts of detours, euphemisms and sym- 
bolisms when they wish to express something which would 
sound either harsh or objectionable to polite society. Thus 
we find that the words thigh and staff are often used in 
the Bible to express that part which represents the male. No 
one is ashamed of taking nourishment, if he is hungry, or of 
quenching thirst, if he is thirsty, and that is why conven- 
ience dreams are quite open. But it is quite different with 
the other necessities of nature and with the functions ap- 
pertaining to sex. Most people are trained to conceal all 
manifestations of the sex impulse, and as a result, all ex- 
pression in this sphere is indirect and distorted even in the 
waking state. It is instructive to note, for instance, some of 
the indirect expressions, such as the "curse" or the "old 
woman" that women use in referring to menstruation, a 
physiological function of which no one indeed need be 
ashamed. It is not at all surprising, then, that this secret 
language in which we speak about sex functions, should so 
often bafHe us. 

A woman, for example, related to me the following dream : 
"I was sleeping with a very disagreeable old lady and was 
quite disgusted." She wished to know how such a dream 
could represent a wish. When I asked her for associations, 
she replied that nothing came to her mind ; there was no one 



THE DREAM: ITS FUNCTION AND MOTIVE 155 

with whom she could identify this "old lady." Then I in- 
quired what she had done the day previous to the dream, for 
we must remember to seek the determinant of the dream in 
that immediate past ; the determinant is invariably an occur- 
rence of the day previous to the dream. Some stimulus or 
impression through any one of the senses strikes, as it were, 
something similar in the mind with which the latter is en- 
grossed, something that has emotional tone; and it is this 
that gives rise to the dream. I learned presently that the 
woman had been at a party the night before, at which one of 
the men proposed to take her horse-back riding on Sunday. 
She went on to tell me that she feared that she could not ac- 
cept the invitation; I inquired what reason she had for 
having to decline it and she informed me, after a little re- 
sistance, that she was afraid she might menstruate on that 
day. It occurred to me then to ask her how she designates 
this function: "Why, we call it the 'disagreeable old 
woman/ " I learned. Here you have the analysis of the 
dream. When the young man invited her to go riding on 
Sunday, she wished to accept but expecting to menstruate 
on that day she had to give an indefinite answer. She 
turned to her sister who understood her and said: "I am 
afraid that the old woman might come." But as she was 
very anxious to go, she dreamed that she had already men- 
struated, that she had gone through with the disagreeable 
affair, that the "old lady" had already been with her. Upon 
superficial examination, then, it would have been nonsense to 
say that the dream represented a wish, but once you under- 
stand what is going on in the dreamer's mind, the deeper 
meaning becomes evident. I repeat, then, in order to analyze 
a dream, it is absolutely necessary to know the dreamer well, 
not only as he is on parade, but in those moments when he is 
most himself; you must know his intimate personality, and 
his idiomatic expressions, as it were. 



156 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

As an example of how dream analysis is made difficult by 
the ''distortion" mechanism, consider the following dream 
related to me by a patient : He dreamed he was translating 
Latin. "I used the word 'whine' and the teacher said it 
should be 'when' not 'whine.' " Upon analysis it was found 
that the teacher in the dream represented myself, that the 
seances with me reminded him of going to school again, of 
coming to me, as to a teacher, and asking me questions. 
Associating further, he presently recalled that the week be- 
fore he felt very much depressed ; he came to me and com- 
plained bitterly. I told him not to "whine," that he would 
surely get well, but that it was only a question of time, — i. e. 
"when." But why did he have to take up Latin? The 
first association that came to his mind apropos of that was 
that whenever he attended his Latin hour, he was always 
nervous : he used an interlinear. I accordingly told him that 
he must be cheating with me, too, and he admitted that he 
was ; he declared that there were certain things that he felt 
he could not reveal to me, that indeed it was rather foolish 
to think that one has to disclose everything to the physician. 
As you see, he was trying to use an interlinear again, but it 
did not work. I informed him that he would recover when 
he ceased whining; "when?" — "When you begin to tell the 
truth ; when you do not use an interlinear, when you will be 
willing to become independent of outside help." 

Another example of distortion as found in dreams may be 
seen in the following case. One of my patients related to 
me how he was present at the usual New Year's Eve dinner 
that his father-in-law is accustomed to give to the whole 
family. At the appropriate moment, the head of the family 
rose and made a speech in which he commented on every 
member of the family in his wonted good-natured way. In 
summing up the results of the past year, the old gentleman 
observed : "When I look upon the assets and the liabilities of 



THE DREAM: ITS FUNCTION AND MOTIVE 157 

the year everyone of you is on the asset side." At this the 
patient smiled and thought to himself: "What about your 
son, the black sheep of the family who is causing you so much 
trouble?" This son was quite a serious problem to his 
father, he was considered the black sheep of the family. He 
was a ne'er-do-well, because he was absolutely unable to tell 
the truth ; he was a pathological liar of the first order. Fol- 
lowing this incident the patient dreamed that he saw a 
balance sheet, under the assets were the names of the various 
members of the family, under the liabilities there was just 
the name of the son. But instead of "liabilities" the word 
was spelt thus : "Lie-abilities." The distortion in this dream 
is exactly of the same character as that found in witticisms. 
When a New York critic, for instance, in reviewing a play, 
the first two acts of which he evidently considered very good, 
the third rather poor, remarked: "The first two acts are 
capital, the third is labor," he was merely resorting to a 
technique which is by no means uncommon in dreams. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE DREAM: ITS FUNCTION AND MOTIVE 

(Continued) 

We posit the fundamental principle that the motive of the 
dream is the wish. The individual craves for something, but 
as he cannot attain it in reality, by virtue of its unattainable 
or disagreeable nature, he realizes it in the dream. When 
one assures you that he does not dream it simply means that 
he does not remember his dreams, and that, because he is 
little interested in the problem of dreams, and last but not 
least because as its function ceases on awakening the re- 
pression reasserts itself. To be sure, some dream more than 
others. Of the many writers who have investigated this 
subject, there was one Santo de Sanctis of Rome who held 
that criminals do not dream. You can readily see what the 
explanation would be in the light of our theories. A 
criminal does not as a rule repress much ; whenever he wants 
something, he immediately sets about attaining it. When the 
average normal person sees something that he wants, but that 
he knows is absolutely beyond his reach, he has learned not 
even to desire it consciously, in any real sense. The criminal 
does not, however, react in this manner. What has caught 
his fancy he immediately sets out to gain ; by virtue of his 
weakmindedness no fear of society and law stays him. Be- 
cause he does not repress, he inevitably has nothing to dream 
about. I have found from my own experience, however, 
that Santo de Sanctis was not entirely right in his conclusions, 
that whereas most criminals I have questioned did not really 

158 



THE DREAM: ITS FUNCTION AND MOTIVE 159 

dream as much as the average person, they all admitted 
nevertheless that they dream occasionally. After all, there is 
no human being who can attain all his wishes. 

In order to understand why the dream should thus be 
motived by the wish it is necessary to have some idea of the 
evolution of the child from the very beginning. The average 
child expresses no wishes, all its wants are gratified by its 
mother ; it lies in the cradle, frolics when satisfied, cries 
when hungry or uncomfortable. Gradually, as it grows 
older its demands multiply and become more marked ; it is 
then that the situation becomes a problem. Observe a child 
that does not as yet know how to express itself in speech and 
you will find that it wants everything that it sees in its en- 
vironment ; it will pull you to the object of its fancy ; it craves 
to grasp and hold it. The older it grows, the more imperious 
become its wants. When it has learned to talk, you can 
readily see how powerfully the wish predominates in life; the 
child demands all the time, nothing can satisfy it. 

The child starts its life with what we call the pleasure 
principle ; it craves for nothing but pleasure. It eats, sleeps, 
and plays. When it is satisfied, it finds pleasure in sucking 
its thumb ; and the Germans very aptly call thumb -sucking 
Wonne-saugen, pleasure sucking. When it has once ex- 
perienced a pleasure it will always seek to reproduce it. 
Specialists have accordingly advised mothers not to rock a 
child to sleep all the time. For motion is the most ele- 
mentary form of pleasure and manifests itself throughout 
our lives. It may interest you to know that it is at the basis 
of our love for dancing and all other enjoyments. In all 
popular amusement resorts that I have visited both here and 
on the continent 99% of the pleasure is essentially based on 
this principle. We find here a reversion to an infantile mode 
of gratification. 

Gradually, however, society begins to curb the child; 



160 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

parents cannot give it everything and it begins to feel the 
force of repression. The older it grows, the more it has to 
cope with the principle of reality; education and all other 
cultural forces are based on the realization that the in- 
dividual has to be prepared to face that stern fact. If he 
does not adjust himself to reality, he will flounder about and 
finally fail, despite everything one may do to help him. I 
saw a man a few weeks ago whose parents were multi- 
millionaires ; he was brought up in the most attractive en- 
vironment. He was destined for the army, sent to West 
Point, stayed there a year and a half and was then expelled 
on demerits ; he would not follow the rules of discipline nor 
study. When he related to me some of his escapades I 
could not help but wonder how he ever succeeded in staying 
at the academy as long as he did. But he explained to me 
that his father was very influential and had considerable 
weight with the authorities. Expelled from West Point, 
he matriculated in other schools, but could not get along in 
any one of them. He was hail-fellow-well-met with the 
students, for he had plenty of money to spend, but he could 
not study. "Why should I? What's the use?" he would 
say to himself. When his father died, he came into his own 
rights and within two or three years he spent not only every 
cent he had, but all that his mother could give him. When 
the war broke out he enlisted. A great many of his old 
classmates w r ere now colonels in the regular army; one of 
them who liked him needed a sergeant-major and so took 
him into his regiment. He did quite well for a time, but 
was presently compelled to leave the post. He was sent 
to the guard house and it was there that he passed most of his 
time throughout the whole war. He would have made a 
good fighter, but he was absolutely unable to adapt himself 
to the demands of reality; he could not be disciplined. He 
could not bear to have "those idiots," as he called some of 



THE DREAM: ITS FUNCTION AND MOTIVE 161 

his superiors, tell him what to do. Recently a Major of 
the Medical Corps advised him to see me. He was ragged 
and torn when he came to me. I learned that he was a dish 
washer in one of the hotels in the city, and had just been 
"fired." The man is quite normal intellectually; he is 
merely a spoiled child, emotionally untrained and wild. He 
was able to do as he wanted when he had money, but now, 
as he put it, he was "down and out." And so it is ab- 
solutely impossible for the individual to get along in the 
world, unless he adjusts himself to the principle of reality, 
which means nothing more nor less than the principle of in- 
hibitions and repressions. Education in the final analysis is 
nothing but a means of equipping the individual with those 
impressions that have already been gathered by others in 
order that he may thus be fitted to face and overcome the 
difficulties and obstacles of life, to cope with the problems 
of reality. 

The child's education, accordingly, begins at a very early 
period. Long before he actually enters school, he has been 
receiving at home all this while instruction of the most vital 
importance; he has been learning all this while to repress. 
Mothers and fathers who have observed carefully the de- 
velopment of the child know but too well that the first word 
that it learns to speak is "no," it is not at all "dada" or 
"mama." It either moves its head to say "no," or 
actually says it. The reason is clear. There is nothing that 
you wish the child to do that it wants to do ; it always insists 
on doing things in its own way. Immediately corrective 
forces begin to operate and the individual who was destined 
by nature to be free and lead a lawless existence is curbed 
finally to the demands of actual life. Centuries of civiliza- 
tion have left their mark upon us, and we must now live 
accordingly. No one, I dare say, would wish to live after 
the manner of our primitive ancestors. There is therefore 



162 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

a constant struggle : no one likes to submit to the repression 
that the inhibitory aspects of civilization demand; no one 
finds it easy to repress the primitive impulses. Thus it may 
be said in truth that the individual begins with "no" from 
his very infancy, and continues to declare it more and more 
vociferously until his death. His life, one might say, is 
one long struggle, one bitter revolt. In the light of this 
principle the idea of absolute independence and happiness 
takes on a rather sombre aspect. For no matter what you 
may do for the individual, he cannot be in any final sense 
happy or independent, for what he really wants is some- 
thing that goes back to his infantile life. In the very nature 
of things, then, we can never be satisfied; no individual 
can ever be absolutely contented with his environment, there 
is always room for improvement. There is a story that runs 
through my mind which some of you may have perhaps 
heard. It is the story of a king whose only child, a little 
girl, became ill. He had the very best doctors attending on 
her; the chief physician finally informed him that the child 
was helpless, that nothing could be done to save her. The 
king waxed angry. "You mean to say that with all your 
knowledge and sciences you cannot do anything for the 
child?" he demanded. "It suffers from a condition that is 
incurable," replied the physician. The king became furious 
and began to threaten. At last one of the doctors declared 
that there was but one thing that could cure the child, and 
that was for her to wear the shirt of one who was per- 
fectly happy. The king was glad, for he thought that that 
was simple enough to do; immediately he had the news 
heralded through the town. But it was impossible to find 
such a person. Meanwhile the child's condition was growing 
more serious and the king was in great distress. Immersed 
in dark thoughts, he took a walk on the outskirts of the city. 
Presently he met a young ragamuffin, a shepherd boy, 



THE DREAM: ITS FUNCTION AND MOTIVE 163 

whistling and very joyful. "You seem to be very happy?" 
said the king. "Yes," answered the boy. "But do tell 
me, what makes you so happy?" inquired the king. "Why 
shouldn't I be? Everything is lovely. Jane loves me and I 
am going to marry her soon. I just feel fine." "Did you 
hear that the king is looking for some one who is perfectly 
happy?" the king continued. "Yes, I heard of it, but I 
haven't a shirt," was the shepherd's reply. You see only a 
person who can be satisfied without having a shirt, can 
really be happy, but are there such persons outside of the 
lunatic asylum? 

Now the significant thing to note is that although society 
has actually succeeded in training the individual to forego 
and renounce and thus to adjust himself to prevailing con- 
ditions, we nevertheless find, when we examine his intimate 
psychological recesses, that he really never foregoes his de- 
sires absolutely, that he has a way of realizing them. In 
dreams, symptoms, and in the manifold unconscious activi- 
ties of every-day life the individual is still able to realize his 
wishes. 

Consider for a moment a child who is little acquainted with 
the force of repression. I once observed a little girl of about 
four years of age who took a fancy to a little wagon that 
another child was playing with. She went directly up to her, 
got hold of the string and wanted to take away the little cart, 
but at the owner's loud protests, the nurse soon hurried up 
and compelled her to leave. The little girl's mother repri- 
manded her in these words, "You must not do that, that's 
not yours, that's the other little girl's wagon." Jane cried 
so bitterly that her mother finally gave her some chalk to play 
with. Presently she drew some figure on the sidewalk and 
pointing to it, cried : "Here's a little wagon." I can assure 
you there was hardly any resemblance to the real object, but 
there was enough likeness there to impress the child. In 



164 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

other words, the little girl actually realized her wish; she 
now had that play toy that she wanted so badly. 

A little girl continued to cry for candy until she finally 
fell asleep. She awoke the next morning crying and when 
asked for the reason, said that some one took away her box 
of chocolate almonds ; she insisted that she had them in bed. 
She was only a little over two years old and was barely able 
to talk. Undoubtedly the child dreamed that she had a big 
box of chocolate almonds, thus actually realizing her wish, 
and unable to distinguish between dream and reality, cried 
on awaking. 

As the child grows older, however, one may observe how 
the wish becomes more and more distorted in the dream. 
There are more and more complex mechanisms appearing 
that reveal that the child's nature is growing more and more 
comprehensive; so long as its mode of reaction was simple, 
its dreams were simple. There is no difficulty in analyzing a 
child's dream below the age of five; it is later that the force 
of repression begins to i.ianifest itself. It is noteworthy 
that it develops also at this time a sense of humor. As 
we have shown above, humor and wit are nothing but 
modes of obtaining pleasure from a distortion of words and 
ideas, and as long as the child is young, it has no need for 
them. When a child bursts out in laughter, it does so be- 
cause some one else laughs, it is not a spontaneous activity 
with it. Gradually children develop more ideas and repress 
considerably more; laughter is then the result of a com- 
plicated stimulus. In my walks with my little girl in the 
park, I used to take her to a place where horses were usually 
watered. For about a year, every time I passed it, I would 
remark: "Here we bring the 'autos' to be watered," to 
which she answered nothing. One day I made the same re- 
mark, and she looked at me quizzically, smiled and said: 
"Autos don't have to be watered." When she came home 



THE DREAM: ITS FUNCTION AND MOTIVE 165 

she told her mother of the funny thing I had said. It is 
significant that her dreams at this period began to assume a 
distorted aspect ; she already showed all the marks of a com- 
plex mind ; the associations were no longer simple. 

The dream assumes, then, a more and more complex and 
distorted character as the child grows older. Thus a little 
boy is in the Zoological garden, and seeing a tiger for the 
first time in his life, is very much attracted by the animal 
and remarks to his father, "Wouldn't it be nice if we had a 
tiger home?" The father tells him that such a thing would 
be altogether impossible in an apartment. The next morning 
the boy tells his father how he dreamed that they had five 
little tigers in the bird cage. So you see, since, as it ap- 
peared to him, the difficulty lay merely in the immensity of 
the animal, he solved it in the dream by appreciably re- 
ducing its size. When this boy was a year older he wanted 
a pony. He asked his grandfather to buy him one and the 
old man said that he would try to do so ; but apparently he 
never meant it seriously, for when Christmas came, the boy 
had to go without one and his disappointment was keen. 
His father explained to him that the old man was only 
joking, for he could not afford the purchase. Then the little 
boy dreamed that he had a pony, and it was lame and he did 
not want it. You see how he reconciled himself now. 
Thus, then, as the child grows older, the dream becomes 
more and more complex, and consequently with it, the wish 
expression. 

The following dreams illustrate remarkably well the essen- 
tial point that I am trying to bring home to you, namely that 
the dream, in the final analysis, is nothing but a concrete 
visualization of a hidden wish. The first of these was 
brought to me by a very active and intelligent woman, and 
runs as follows : "I was in a train and had a baby wrapped 
up in a blanket, and a negro nurse. The baby was sleeping 



1 66 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

at the foot of the bed. I was in bed. The nurse was sitting 
on a bench in front. There came people, — a whole crowd 
of them — from a certain club, and I said I had to nurse the 
baby. I looked to see whether he was awake because he 
had been so very quiet. I saw that the child had a man's 
face; he smiled at me and said, 'I can wait, I am not 
hungry!' " 

Now the dream appeared strange and comical to the 
dreamer. When she had related it to me, she laughed and 
observed, "Isn't that funny, I wonder what you can make out 
of it?" Knowing the patient well, it was no difficult 
matter to interpret the dream. She informed me that the 
previous evening she gave a dinner to a gentleman who was 
lecturing at this club of which we hear in the dream. It is 
an association which she founded about twenty years ago 
for the advancement of child-study, and its demands upon 
her time and attention were very great. Most of the duties 
devolved upon her, and she was therefore kept constantly 
busy. She heaved a sigh of relief when the dinner was 
over, and bewailed her lot to her husband who remarked: 
"It's about time they got some one else to do the work. 
The association is now grown up and I should think there 
would be a great many others who would take your place." 
That was what she really wished. We now see how in- 
geniously the idea is represented: the baby in the dream is 
this association devoted to child-study which she has founded 
and which she now desires to be sufficiently grown up to take 
care of itself and relieve her of her many duties. She 
wonders whether the child was awake, "he was so quiet:" 
we see here her wish that the association would not tax so 
much of her time. And further, when she looks at the child 
she finds that he is grown up ; he says "I can wait, I am not 
hungry." We see here the concrete visualization of what 
her husband said, "the association is grown up and could get 



THE DREAM: ITS FUNCTION AND MOTIVE 167 

along without you." The dream thus realizes her wish : the 
association is grown up and can get along without her con- 
stant attention ; the baby can get along without her constant 
nursing and care : "I can wait, I am not hungry," he assures 
her. 

Miss W., a college student of about twenty, related to me 
the following dream: "1 saw Apollo embracing Venus de 
Milo, and then Apollo stabbed her in the breast." As we 
look at the dream, it does not seem to represent a wish, and 
what is more, it does not contain the dreamer. Before pro- 
ceeding any further, then, permit me at once to impress upon 
your mind that whenever you cannot find the dreamer, look 
for him under the guise of the dream's central or predomi- 
nant character. That is the only way to get at the heart of 
the situation. If the dreamer is a man, he is concealed in the 
hero of the dream, if a woman, in the heroine. Remember 
also that it makes no difference whether he is represented by 
human beings or by animals. A man, for example, told me 
yesterday how he dreamed that two cats were engaged in a 
boxing match, how, strange to say, they were all the while 
exchanging bitter words, and how finally the smaller cat 
succeeded in "knocking out" the bigger opponent. When 
we resorted to continuous association, the dreamer recalled a 
scene he witnessed on the day before the dream, in the college 
gymnasium, in which two men were boxing; one was heavy 
and tall, the other was light, and quick as a "cat." The 
latter, because of his agility, "knocked out" his adversary. 
If I were to describe to you the dream in full, you would 
readily see that the dreamer identified himself with the suc- 
cessful boxer; he takes, therefore, a situation in which he 
overcomes an individual whom he would like to "knock out" 
in reality, and because of the peculiarly intimate relation in 
his mind between the agility of the boxer and a cat, he 
transforms it entirely into a fight between two cats. 



1 68 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

In this intimate relation existing between the dreamer and 
the central character in the dream there is a marked analogy 
to the relation that we find between the author and his work. 
In the final analysis we may say that a book invariably 
describes directly or indirectly the author. He is always the 
central figure in the story, and if like Bernard Shaw he can 
talk under five or ten characters it merely shows that he is 
by just that much the more gifted and versatile author. The 
dominant ideas expressed are his ideas, they may be traced 
back ultimately to the one source, — his own personality. 
That is why the hero overcomes generally all vicissitudes, 
he is never vanquished, for unless, of course, the author is 
masochistic, he does not wish to die or be conquered. In 
this connection I cannot help but relate to you a case on 
which a lawyer consulted me some years ago. The story 
received quite a bit of notoriety in New York. A young 
woman entered suit against her elderly, wealthy husband for 
separation and alimony. She was said to be of a shady repu- 
tation and merely desired to get rid of him, so that she could 
live with another man. The respondent's lawyer was anxious 
to know whether I could do anything to help him. Among the 
things he had with him was a typewritten manuscript which 
was written by the young woman ; it was a story that she in- 
tended for publication. When I read it, I noted quite a 
number of significant things from which one was able to 
draw many conclusions. For one thing, I felt quite con- 
vinced that the authoress was carrying on an amour with 
the head waiter in some New York restaurant, for it was 
nothing short of such stuff that she fashioned her hero and 
what was just as significant, the restaurant that she de- 
scribed tallied remarkably with any one of ours on Broad- 
way. When I expressed my mind in the matter to the 
lawyer, I learned that it was just such a " fellow" that was 



THE DREAM: ITS FUNCTION AND MOTIVE 169 

suspected as the paramour. Following this clue, detectives 
soon completely corroborated my conclusion. 

Following, then, this rule as to the dreamer's place in the 
dream, I could at once see the character behind whose skin, 
so to say, Miss W. lay concealed, I knew that Venus must 
undoubtedly represent the dreamer. To my query as to 
what she knew of the ancient goddess she replied tersely: 
"Oh! I just love her!" She then continued to inform me 
that she had a picture of Venus both in her room at college 
and at home. I could now plainly see why she identified 
herself with her. Upon investigating further, I found that 
Miss W. would often argue quite warmly with her room 
mate at college when they both undressed on retiring as to 
who of the two resembled Venus more, and that the final 
decision was in the former's favor. We thus see how she 
actually identified herself with Venus. 

By way somewhat of a digression, I may remark that I 
have always found it instructive to question people as to 
whom in history they consider their greatest personage, 
their ideal character. There is, of course, the underlying 
assumption here that the individual who represents this 
idea is the one with whom we consciously or unconsciously 
identify ourselves. In a little paper that I have written on 
the subject 1 I have pointed out that most of the persons 
whom I have questioned mentioned Napoleon as their ideal 
character; and though 60% of them were Christians only 
two mentioned Jesus. Over 90% of those whom I ques- 
tioned took individuals like Napoleon as their ideal type; 
Lincoln took second place to him. But we must bear in 
mind that the latter was far from being a weakling, that, 
on the other hand, he was more than in one sense, an un- 
usually strong man. I have drawn some significant con- 
clusions from the data I have thus collected and have des- 

1 The Empathic Index, Medical Record, Feb., 1920. 



170 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

ignated the individuars particular answer as his "Emphatic 
Index." The latter shows the character one identifies him- 
self with, whom one tries to emulate, you might say, uncon- 
sciously. There is no doubt that Napoleon represents the 
very acme of primitivity; and the secret of the profound 
fascination that he exerts over us lies undoubtedly in the 
fact that he is an embodiment of those very things that we 
unconsciously and even consciously admire. There are 
many other interesting considerations about the emphatic 
index that we might dwell on, but for our purpose now I 
merely wish to point out that when a person states that he 
most admires this or that character, then it is that character 
after whom he desires to be modelled, or whom he desires 
to emulate, — like master like man, as it is said. 

It is quite evident, then, that Miss W. wished to look like 
Venus. Now it is natural that if Venus is going to have an 
affaire de cceur, it cannot be with a common mortal of to- 
day, it has to be with Apollo. When I asked her to tell me 
something of Apollo, she said: "Well, I can tell you the 
story about him from mythology." I asked her to describe 
how he looked in the dream and she replied : "Just like that 
lieutenant I told you about." The latter was a young man 
with whom she had danced the night before. When she 
had described Apollo I found that she had at least a half 
dozen men in that one character. In other words, this 
Apollo of hers was indeed a very modern gentleman ; he was 
a condensation, a fusion of a great many individuals whom 
she knew. This is nothing unusual. Ask a man, for in- 
stance, to describe his ideal woman and he will draw on ever 
so many women to describe her ; she must be as tall as Miss 
so-and-so, have hair as Miss Brown's, etc. One man to 
whom I put the question actually had no less than the attri- 
butes of fifteen women in his conception of his ideal wife. 
Miss W. met the lieutenant with whom she associated Apollo 



THE DREAM: ITS FUNCTION AND MOTIVE 171 

at a war camp sociable where the men who were presently 
to leave for the war were entertained. Flushed and stimu- 
lated by the dance, she came home, feeling a sense of "pity" 
for this aviator who, in his full manhood and strength, was 
going forth to the war, perhaps never to return ; and indeed, 
did he not express that very sentiment to her himself? He 
had taken her home on the night of the dance and on parting, 
asked her to kiss him good-by, but she had refused. Of 
course, later, on retiring to bed, she was sorry that she had 
denied him that request. We may thus see that the whole 
scene had a distinct erotic setting. Analysis reveals that the 
dream represented the realization of a wish which could 
just as well have been open. If the young woman had not 
been brought up in the manner that she was, she could have 
consciously thought to herself, "Yes, I am very pleased with 
the lieutenant and how I do wish he were here to court me." 
But such was her moral training at home that she did not 
dare think of such a thing: She was trained to regard such 
a thought as immoral and ugly. And so in repressing this 
very thought, she has this particular dream. I should add 
that she awoke markedly excited and with a feeling of palpi- 
tation of the heart. We may accordingly designate her 
dream as one of anxiety, and like all dreams of this type, it 
denoted gross sex, physical sex. The young woman never 
consciously, of course, thought of that in the waking state; 
all that she was aware of was the usual stimulation that any 
refined and modest girl would experience on a similar oc- 
casion. 

The question now presents itself : What does the dream 
represent? To answer this, we must turn our attention for 
a moment to a brief consideration of a highly interesting psy- 
chological mechanism often encountered in unconscious men- 
tation like dream and myths. Whenever we wish to speak 
in the waking state about any delicate situation that refers to 



172 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

the lower part of the body, we displace it to the upper part 
of the body. A woman suffering from some digestive dis- 
turbance, will usually declare, when questioned about her 
condition, that she merely has a cold. Instead of telling the 
truth, menstruating women will very often veil their con- 
dition by some such general remark as that they are ill-dis- 
posed, or that they have a cold or throat trouble. In other 
words, they show a mechanism which is well known in symp- 
toms and dreams, namely, the displacement from below to 
above. If we bear in mind now that the dream simply 
represented a situation below the waist-line, we can readily 
see its concealed meaning; it was a gross sex dream, the 
stabbing denoting coitus, a situation which no woman of her 
type would ever have allowed herself to think of in the 
waking state. But as we have said again and again, it does 
not matter whether one thinks of these things consciously. 
Nature demands expression of these powerful emotional and 
instinctive forces at a certain age in life, and whether we 
are consciously aware of them or not — particularly, if we 
are not — they manifest themselves in just such ways. We 
find such an anxiety dream about being stabbed, all because 
to the average cultured, unmarried woman, coitus and every- 
thing directly or indirectly associated with it are painted in 
horrible colors; women are all made to feel that it entails 
very much pain, and particularly if it is illicit, that it repre- 
sents an experience almost equivalent to death. Those were, 
then, the feelings that fleeted through the woman's uncon- 
scious mind and that found concealed expression in the 
dream. Thus the dream is not at all as mysterious as we at 
first might have thought; its deeper meaning becomes clear 
to us, if we only understand the mechanisms which one has 
to look for in any unconscious mentation. 

Consider with me now the following dream related to me 
by a patient: "I was discussing some business deal with a 



THE DREAM: ITS FUNCTION AND MOTIVE 173 

prospective partner; I listened in silence and then said: 
'You cant put tliat over on me.' I said that because he put 
his foot on my knee. I got hold of him by the leg, threw 
him around and right over my head; he fell on his head to 
the ground and broke his neck. He was dead. I then went 
out and found my mother because I was very much afraid; 
I feared that I would be arrested." 

Here, of course, there is no difficulty in finding the chief 
actor ; he certainly cannot be the dead man, he must be the 
dreamer himself. The man who related to me the dream 
was an officer who had just recently returned from the war ; 
he told me that he was seeking new business connections, as 
his old association was not of the kind that he desired, that 
he felt that now he was back, it was the opportune time to 
make a new and better start. With this view he had dis- 
cussed the matter with different people. The determinant of 
the dream was a conference, then, with a prospective 
partner on a new business venture ; we find here the clue to 
the dream. When I questioned him about the action in the 
dream — throwing the man down and breaking his head, — 
he replied that he could only recall the following: 
"When I was at college on the football team I played end. 
The particular year that I have in mind the other team was 
much heavier than ours and they beat us very badly. The 
score was, — well, I am ashamed to tell it to you even now — 
48-0." Mark how deeply he felt over the incident, though 
it was now many years since it had occurred. Then he con- 
tinued to inform me that the next year they played the same 
team, and knowing the terrible defeat they suffered at its 
hands previously, they practiced a great deal and succeeded 
in beating the rival team. He related how, when the latter 
began to repeat its old tactics, he was all prepared for them, 
how he always succeeded in throwing over his opponent, and 
how he incapacitated one of the adversaries for the rest of 



\ 



174 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

the game. In other words, the second year he won; the 
first year he was badly beaten. I asked him about his 
mother in the dream and he went on to say that the game 
was so extremely rough that his mother who came to see it, 
was at the very beginning of the game so disturbed and 
frightened that she had to leave the stand and sat apart 
crying, fearing that something serious would inevitably re- 
sult from such a rough and tumble. As a matter of fact, 
only three of the original players went through with the 
game: as for himself, he became delirious and was in such 
a serious condition when finally brought out after the game 
that his mother had actually to take him in hand and nurse 
him back to life, as it were. 

The question is, "Why should all these things be bound up 
with the dream?" As you see, there is a similar situation 
now; he was in business and considered it a failure; he 
wanted something new. He is about to go into a new line 
of work ; and the same situation of suffering a defeat before 
and now taking up something new in which he was to be as 
successful as in the second football game, or, in other words, 
in which he was to win, presents itself. He succeeds so 
well that he "knocks" out his partner at once! "Putting 
something over him," as he expressed it, is actually true, it 
is actually acted out in the dream : "the partner put his foot 
on my (the dreamer's) knee;" we have an actual picture of 
it in the dream. Here you see that the whole past associated 
with the football game is symbolic of the present situation; 
in other words, he was a failure the first time, a winner the 
second time. Now the idea in his mind is: "I would like 
to form a partnership in which I am successful ;" and as it is 
an anticipation dream, he sees himself already winning, i. e., 
acting as he did in the football game in which he was not at 
all concerned if he killed his opponent or not, provided he 
was successful. 



THE DREAM: ITS FUNCTION AND MOTIVE 175 

The above dream clearly reveals the three strata of every 
dream, — first the present (trying to get into a new business) ; 
second, the past (the present situation becomes associated 
with a similar situation in the past. We must remember 
that there are so many experiences that occur in one's life 
that there is no situation of to-day that will not revive some 
similar situation in the past) ; third, the remote past or in- 
fantile. There is no dream, however simple, that does not 
show these three strata. Your dream to-day touches di- 
rectly or indirectly, something of yesterday; it is absurd to 
think that we dream merely of some trifle that is only of 
importance to the immediate present. In the above dream 
we see how the particular present situation was expressed 
symbolically by some situation of the past ; and when we go 
further with the analysis, we find that the same tracks, as it 
were, existed in the person's childhood. At this earlier 
period he had an older brother who constantly dominated 
him, "put it over him," and he was thus prepared, we might 
say, to meet similar situations later in life. That is why it 
is so important that you understand these mechanisms ; for 
when, as parents, you find that a child is handicapped in this 
way, it will be your duty to take a special attitude toward the 
problem ; you must not allow the older child to dominate the 
younger one. As teachers, you must always see to it that the 
child who is considerably younger than the average should 
not be placed in a class of older children, even if it is up to 
the mark intellectually. Children should mix with only those 
of their own mental and physical equipment, and that is 
usually only possible with those of the same age. The so- 
called smart child that is put together with considerably older 
children is seriously harmed thereby; when he grows up he 
is forever harassed by a feeling of inferiority. I have seen 
many people who have gone through school at the age of, 
let us say, fourteen or fifteen, when they should have gone 



176 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

to sixteen and seventeen ; they were intellectually precocious, 
but emotionally they were always handicapped. They were 
called "Shorty" or "Kid" at school and it was in such emo- 
tional states that they remained throughout life, because 
they saw the school situation everywhere, whether it really 
existed or not; they followed the path of the acquired 
tendency. As I have reiterated so frequently here, cer- 
tain tracks are laid out from the very beginning and the in- 
dividual always follows them. In brief, one might say that 
our present acts if not exact reproductions of, are certainly 
analogous to, the past, they are, so to speak, symbolic of the 
past. 

In the beginning of our course we pointed out that such 
imperfect analogies, such symbolic expressions as we find in 

dreams are found also in symptoms. It matters 
symptoms not how bizarre, how seemingly senseless the pa- 

tient s symptom may be, it has a definite meaning 
in his life, it bears an intimate relation to his inner problems 
and conflicts ; and it is only by understanding it that we can 
comprehend and evaluate his attitude toward the world. 

Years ago Miss R., a young woman around the early 
twenties, was brought to me by her mother. The history of 
the case was that for months she had been very depressed; 
she ate very little and spent most of her time in crying ; she 
suffered from insomnia and thought of suicide. She was 
seen by many physicians some of whom designated her con- 
dition as nervousness, others as insanity. I spoke to the 
parent before I saw the patient. She talked about the 
daughter's condition in the characteristic fashion of the 
grieved and devoted mother, and remarked sadly: "It's too 
bad, Doctor, such a fine girl! She always stayed at home, 
never went out with the boys and was so well-behaved ; and 
now she has been sick so long." When I turned to the girl 



THE DREAM: ITS FUNCTION AND MOTIVE 177 

and asked her why she was so depressed, she began to cry, 
and upon urging her to speak, she declared that she was 
unworthy, that she had committed all kinds of transgressions. 
Upon being pressed for further explanation, she replied that 
she had drowned some pups; whereupon the mother im- 
mediately interposed, "But, Doctor, that happened when she 
was a little bit of a girl, about twenty years ago, and I am 
sure she did not do it." However that may be, there was 
no need for the mother to attempt to exonerate her daughter, 
for the moment I learned that this incident went ever so 
many years back, I had all good reason to pause and wonder 
why a person should cry to-day over what had occurred 
twenty years ago, and what, up to a few months ago, she 
never gave the slightest thought to. Moreover, such epi- 
sodes are rarely impressive to the extent of being taken up 
so many years later in life. 

A patient like Miss R. may be variously diagnosed; she 
may be said to be merely nervous ; some designated her con- 
dition as manic depressive insanity, by which we mean that 
she suffered from a form of emotional disturbance which 
comes in certain cycles, periodically, as we said previously; 
sometimes the patient is maniacal, sometimes depressed. In 
this particular case there was no history of any previous at- 
tacks, nor was there anything in her family to justify that 
there was a tendency to such attacks, as one usually finds in 
the real cases of manic depressive insanity. After observing 
her for a week I diagnosed her condition as a case of anxiety 
hysteria. 

When we attempt to help the patient, we must depend in 
large measure upon his cooperation and treat the symptom 
just as we treat a dream. Now the dream that we remember 
we call the "manifest" dream ; in analyzing it we are aiming 
to get at its "latent" content. The manifest dream may re- 
quire perhaps just two lines to describe, but when we begin 



178 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

to take the associations to it, or in other words, to discover 
its "latent" content, we may have to write ten pages or even 
more. The same thing holds true of symptoms. You see a 
patient in the insane asylum hallucinating; she hears voices. 
Ask her who it is that is talking to her and she will inform 
you that it is "Mr. Brown." Upon investigation you will 
find that the latter had paid her attention and that she was 
in love with him ; now she is hallucinating, thinking that he 
is speaking to her. You find the "latent" content in order to 
determine the nature and mechanism of the patient's 
symptom. 

I saw Miss R. for a week or two ; she would always come 
with her mother and after each interview, the parent would 
come into my consulting room in the characteristic, appre- 
hensive manner of a mother and would remark, in passing: 
"Isn't it terrible, Doctor, that such a misfortune should 
befall such a nice girl ! She never went out with boys, she 
was always so well-behaved!" I began to feel that the 
mother was laying undue emphasis on her daughter's being 
such a "nice" girl. I had no doubt whatsoever that she 
actually believed what she said and as for myself, I had no 
reason to question its veracity, but I was just struck by the 
emphasis. We say in our work that there is a definite re- 
lation between the "noopsyche" and the "thymopsyche," be- 
tween the mind and the emotions; they are directly pro- 
portional. In other words, if in speaking to you here I try 
to impress you with certain facts, I do not act like a person 
who would inform you that there is a fire in the building; 
the emotional element would be disproportionate to the idea 
involved. With this key of undue emphasis, then, I began to 
suspect that there must be something behind the mother's 
assurance. One could see that the mother in repeating those 
words to me was really assuring herself ; that she un- 
doubtedly reacted to an unconscious doubt about her 



THE DREAM: ITS FUNCTION AND MOTIVE 179 

daughter's proper behavior. So I began to work on this 
theory, following the well known detective formula, "cher- 
chez I'homme" I began accordingly to inquire into the 
patient's love life, but she was reluctant to speak about it. 
She simply assured me that she was leading the usual 
average life. To my question whether she had a love affair 
she showed an unusual emotional reaction; she burst into 
tears and as I was unable to calm her the seance had to be 
ended. The next time she came I began the analysis again 
and again she began to cry ; but emotions are exhaustible, so 
presently her tears were spent and she began to talk. 

In analyzing her symptoms, I asked myself : "What are 
the elements that enter into it?" or in other words, "why 
does this woman cry to-day over an episode of twenty years 
ago?" Every emotion that a person experiences must have 
some reason for its existence, and if you cannot find that 
reason in the present, you may be quite sure that the emotion 
is displaced to some situation to which it does not strictly 
belong, but with which it has become connected by some 
direct or indirect association. Now whenever an emotion 
has to be displaced, it simply means that it cannot remain 
with the original episode, but must be transferred to some 
other situation. There was no reason for the woman's cry- 
ing over a trifling and insignificant episode that occurred 
far back in her childhood. One might dislike to witness 
pups being drowned, but there is no reason why one should 
continue to wail over it for months, after it was seemingly 
forgotten for about twenty years. I was urged, then, to the 
conclusion that the episode relating to the pups was only a 
concealing memory, it was a memory which she brought to 
the surface and retained in consciousness simply because a 
similar episode occurred in the present which had to be con- 
cealed. When we analyze the episode we find that it in- 
volves essentially the destruction of young life, pups, by 



180 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

water. That is its intrinsic significance. Now just as in 
the last dream that we have considered, the present situation 
showed a direct analogy to some situation in the past, a 
business proposition became identified by analogy with a 
football game, so we have to discover in the symptom some 
fundamental element that it may have in common with the 
early childhood reminiscence. The main element in the 
symptom that one should seek as an analogy would be some 
form of destruction of life, associated somehow with water, 
which must have occurred later in this young woman's life, 
because we are always deeply affected and stirred by some 
present, not by some past circumstance. I told her ac- 
cordingly that I suspected that she had some sexual trouble, 
that it had something to do with an abortion or some similar 
experience ; whereupon she disclosed to me the whole state of 
affairs. She informed me that she kept company with a 
young man who would regularly call at her home, that when, 
to her great dismay, she found herself pregnant and in- 
formed him about it, he upbraided and repulsed her, accus- 
ing her of having had sexual relations with some other man. 
She pleaded with him and he finally took her to a midwife 
who performed an abortion. But that did not end here. 
Following this, she was compelled to treat herself with 
douches, and as she did not know how to take them they 
caused her considerable trouble and worriment. Add to this 
the fact that the entire affair had to be concealed from her 
mother and you can readily imagine in what a pitiable plight 
the poor girl found herself. When things were settled 
presently, from a medical viewpoint at any rate, she began 
to feel the mortification of the past and it was about six or 
eight weeks following the painful experience that she had 
the nervous breakdown. In other words, she could no longer 
conceal the terrible misfortune that she had to go through ; 
it demanded some outlet, some form of expression. But as 



THE DREAM: ITS FUNCTION AND MOTIVE 181 

she could not openly dwell on it, she took unconsciously 
some similar situation in the past and endowed it with all 
the intensity of her actual state of feeling. Shall I repeat 
again that whatever we experience, no matter whether it be 
at the age of two, three or four, is always retained in the 
mind and recalled on the appropriate occasion ? The present 
episode keeps on revolving in the mind until it falls into the 
special track that was laid out for it, as it were, from the 
very beginning, because of some intrinsic element of simi- 
larity it bears to the early experience. And when we re- 
member how many and how diverse are the impressions we 
receive every day, we will not find it hard to see that nothing 
that happens to-day cannot find an analogy in something that 
has occurred in the past. Imagine the impression about the 
drowning pups deep down in the unconscious; here is that 
powerful, conscious emotion which has to be repressed be- 
cause she cannot consciously dwell on it, and naturally by 
analogy, it falls into the track of that early childhood im- 
pression. The same elements are there: the attributes of 
both experiences are analogous, that is, attribute for attribute. 
I may perhaps make this a little clearer by an illustration 
from my own experience. Last week I was walking one 
very frosty evening through the street with my dog when his 
attention was attracted by sounds coming from a paper 
bundle lying in the middle of the road. I heard a low, moan- 
ing sound coming from it and I was naturally interested to 
know what it could be. On coming up to it I found two 
little pups that some hard-hearted person must have exposed 
with the hope, apparently, that they would freeze to death 
or be run over and killed. And here is the significant thing : 
that very night I had a dream, the latent content of which 
elicited a little episode that I heard related when I was a boy 
of surely no more than eight years old. It was about some 
peasant who was hung, because he exposed two of his own 



1 82 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

babies on a cold, wintry night, thus causing their death, 
simply to please his second wife who hated them and would 
not let them in the house. It was the first time I had heard 
of an execution and it evidently made a profound impression 
upon me. But as far as I know, I had never thought of the 
episode since then. But you see the moment I saw these 
little pups exposed to the freezing weather that early child- 
hood experience was unconsciously revived together with all 
its attending emotions. That is the way the mind works; 
a present situation may evoke from the past some early im- 
pression by reason of the former's intrinsic element of con- 
trast or analogy to the early experience. We may see, then, 
that in the case of Miss R. the concealing memory simply 
represented what happened later. It is interesting to mark 
that the latent content required about three or four weeks 
to reveal, whereas the manifest content was always on the 
surface. The moment the young woman began to grope 
about unconsciously for a reason why she could cry about 
her condition in public, that episode from the remote past 
was revived because of its intrinsic resemblance to the 
present situation. It was immediately invested with all the 
emotions, and what was more, she herself did not have the 
least thought that it was really over the later episode that she 
was crying. She did not deliberately take up that early 
childhood memory and wail over it ; it was all unconscious on 
her part. What she really, then, cried over was the im- 
mediate past, the terrible anguish and keen disappointment 
that she recently had to bear. She had accordingly typical 
symptoms of anxiety hysteria and to physicians who are not 
trained in psychiatric work, her condition seemed to re- 
semble the manic depressive type of insanity. 

Thus, then, we see that the dream and the symptom show 
the same mechanisms, both show a definite relation to the 



THE DREAM: ITS FUNCTION AND MOTIVE 183 

inner life of the person, both are incursions into conscious- 
ness from the unconscious, and that, in fine, it is necessary to 
get at what we call their "latent" contents to grasp their es- 
sential significance and meaning. 



CHAPTER VIII 
TYPES OF DREAMS 

We have discussed thus far dreams that either represent 
open wishes, like convenient dreams, or are hidden realiza- 
Anxiety tions of a repressed wish. The latter type is of 
Dreams course the more usual and I have given you a 
number of examples of it. There is another form of dreams 
which realizes fears, as it were, and which we call anxiety 
dreams; we say that the anxiety there replaces the libido 
or the desire. The individual is overwhelmed with a sense 
of terror, he wakes up terrified and trembling. It is the sort 
of dream which is commonly known as a nightmare, and to 
one unacquainted with the deeper mechanisms of dream 
formation it does not seem to represent a wish. In order to 
understand it, it is necessary to understand what we mean 
by anxiety. 

Anxiety or fear is found in two forms. In the normal 
form, it is a protective mechanism which is found in every 
individual. The child is endowed with a certain amount of 
fear from its very birth. It is needless to say that an 
animal's life would be seriously jeopardized if it knew no 
fear. But there is another type of fear or anxiety mani- 
festing itself in neurotic disturbances, that we recognize as 
being distinctly abnormal. Take, for instance, the case of a 
man who is afraid to go out into the street for fear lest he 
be run over; he realizes too well how absurd and ill— 
igrounded is his apprehension, but nilly willy, he is afraid to 
leave the house. Another person may be afraid to go near a 

184 



TYPES OF DREAMS 185 

window, lest he jump out. Of course, it is perfectly natural 
for the average person to experience some sense of uneasi- 
ness perhaps when standing by a high open window, but he 
is not going to be apprehensive to the point where he actually 
fears to go near it ; yet in some nervous disturbance, a person 
will under no circumstances go near a window, because he is 
afraid of falling out. Likewise, some people may refuse to 
cross bridges : "Suppose the bridge breaks," they will argue. 
They may be well-trained engineers and realize that that is 
impossible or most improbable, but they are fearful despite 
all assurance. The fear, in other words, is distinctly patho- 
logical. 

When we analyze cases of phobias and anxiety states we 
find that it is not the immediate particular situation, that, 
to be more explicit, it is not the perception of the probable 
immediate danger that is the cause of the fear, but some 
altogether different and basic condition ; in other words, that 
the anxiety is merely displaced from a condition to which it 
properly belongs to an altogether different idea. We have 
already noted this displacement of anxiety when we spoke 
about the psychology of the fear of burglars. It was ob- 
served also that this fear is usually found among women who 
are suffering from a lack of sexual outlet. We saw that 
what lies back of it is nothing but the unconscious craving for 
gross or physical sex ; but as the woman cannot speak about 
it openly, the repressed craving unconsciously attaches itself 
to some analogous situation that can be openly dwelt on, — 
an illicit intrusion into one's private room for which she 
cannot be held responsible. It is only a disguised expression 
of the real craving. The biological demands of life crave for 
an outlet, but the individual has been so well trained by 
society, or in other words, the repression has been carried to 
such a point that she would not dare even admit the real 



1 86 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

situation to herself. The craving manifests itself, therefore, 
in this disguised form. 

As I have reiterated so frequently in the past, it matters 
very little how exacting and scrupulous may be our moral 
teachings and requirements, there are the actual biological 
laws or demands of the human being that are of paramount 
consideration. Biology teaches us that as the individual 
grows older, it becomes more and more patent what his mis- 
sion in this world is to be, — namely, to mate and propagate 
his kind. This sexual function, as it is generally termed, 
appears from the very beginning of our existence, and as- 
sumes more and more significance and importance with the 
advance and development of the individual. We use the 
word "sex," of course, in its very broadest sense, as being 
synonymous with love, but it may interest you to know, that 
if you trace the origin of the word "love," you will find that 
it is derived from a word in Sanskrit which denotes "lust" ; 
it is significant that the word for "love" in Hebrew means 
also "lust." The ancients, apparently, have made no mistake 
about the meaning of love ; to them there was certainly a com- 
plete identification of love and what we generally consider, 
with no little degree of disparagement, as being grossly physi- 
cal or sensual, or sex. It is only with the advance of Christian 
civilization that this marked contrast has grown up, that one 
speaks about sex as something base and ugly, and love as that 
divine fire of which the poet speaks so eloquently. But as a 
matter of fact, love and sex are one and the same thing ; we 
cannot have one without the other. It is useless to delude 
ourselves into the belief that one side of the fact is sublime, 
while the other that has to do with the service of propaga- 
tion is low and degrading. Of course, there is just this 
much to be said, — the modern individual cannot use any of 
his functions in the manner of our primitive ancestors, and 
our behavior in mating is as different from that of the 



TYPES OF DREAMS 187 

savage as the function of nourishment in modern man is 
different from that in his primitive brother. We have 
learned that certain things are incompatible with our en- 
vironment. But it would be just as ridiculous to suppose 
that we can dispense with the natural sex function on that 
account as it would be to suppose that we can dispense with 
food, because we do not eat like the savage. The funda- 
mental necessity remains, and no law can be evolved that 
will eliminate it. 

To be sure, we had no quarrels with the sex function as 
long as we considered it beautiful and sacred. We know 
how much revered it was in early religions. Likewise the 
child sees nothing ugly or immoral in sex; we know how it 
shows no scruples in exposing itself naked. But it learns, 
in time, to control and repress, to conceal what would be 
obnoxious to its environment. And thus the sex impulses 
have had to be concealed more and more as time went on. 
What is more, it was found necessary with the advance of 
civilization to defer the mating instinct. Animals begin to 
manifest the sex impulse at an early age, as soon as they 
begin to walk. The same is found among primitive races. 
Thus among the natives of New Guinea many travelers have 
reported sexual practices among children of six and seven 
years. The situation is different in modern times: civiliza- 
tion, has found that it is impossible to indulge in sex at the 
time it openly manifests itself, and sexual gratification, 
therefore, must be markedly deferred. Thus with the ad- 
vance of centuries of civilization, particularly with the rise 
and spread of Christianity, the sex instincts have been more 
and more repressed, so that now the whole impulse is so 
distorted that it appears to the individual incomprehensible 
and baffling to the last degree, and it is actually necessary to 
enlighten modern men and women in matters sexual. I 
say this advisedly. But the fact remains that the urge is 



1 88 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

there, and whether the individual desires or no, it always 
manifests itself. 

Hence, sex in our sense is only a part of the mating im- 
pulse which we may include in the general term love. Any 
manifestation of the love impulse, be it in the child or the 
adult, may be considered as a phase of sex. We may there- 
fore explain on this same basis any phobia or pathological 
fear even in children, except, of course, that we must bear in 
mind that here the phobia deals with infantile love. Only 
four or five weeks ago a little girl of ten was brought to me 
because she was afraid that burglars anight enter her room ; 
she absolutely would not sleep alone. Formerly she was ac- 
customed to sleep in a room all by herself ; but now she was 
so afraid that the only way to quiet her was to take her into 
the parents' bed ; otherwise she would not fall asleep. The 
cure consisted in just analyzing with the child frankly and 
simply the basic sexual significance of the situation. I con- 
fess, I was a little surprised when the little girl informed me 
that what puzzled her so much v/as that her mother told her 
about child birth, but failed to explain to her how child birth 
started. "How does it happen that the child grows in the 
mother's womb like a flower ?" the little girl asked me. The 
mother had apparently related only part of the story. I ex- 
plained to the little girl the significant aspects of the problem, 
and it was really quite impressive to see how grateful she 
felt for the information. "I learned so much to-day from 
Dr. Brill," she remarked. "Why do you call him a doctor ; 
he is more like a teacher." The child was cured after she 
realized that her fear was nothing but her desire to have her 
mother and father with her. She had been very much 
coddled by the parents ; her father particularly had been too 
lavish in his affections, he used to fondle and kiss her al- 
together too much and now her emotions could no longer be 
contained and welled forth overwhelmingly strong. By 



TYPES OF DREAMS 189 

helping this child to understand this, and adjusting her love- 
life generally, the phobia disappeared. 

To understand better how the direct sex demands manifest 
themselves in the anxiety dream, it may be well perhaps to 
consider with you in some details the three phases of sex 
life as propounded by Prof. Freud: first, the autoerotic, 
second the narcistic, and third the object love. The term 
autoerotic you can readily translate into self -sufficient, self- 
gratified, or self -adequate. The child shows a sexual life 
from the very beginning, but it is very different, of course, 
from that of the adult. That is only natural ; it can no more 
experience the sex emotions like the adult than it can run 
or talk like him. In the second stage, which begins at about 
two and a half, or three and a half years, the child is pre- 
dominately interested in his own body. Then we have the 
latency period, from about four to eight, followed by the 
prepubescent age from about eight through eleven. Now 
comes puberty. We must bear in mind that it is during the 
latency period that the child receives most of those impres- 
sions which prepare it for life. To be sure, it begins to take 
on impressions from the very beginning of its existence; 
but it is in this period, which we may justly call the school 
period, that it actually begins to learn how to adjust itself to 
society. The definite phase of adjustment which we asso- 
ciate generally with education really starts at the latency 
period when the child begins to go to school. It has, of 
course, already a certain adjustment as a result of its home 
training, and the observant teacher will attest to the fact 
that the child shows even at this early age a very character- 
istic mode of reacting to its environment. In other words, 
before entering school the child already has a definite adjust- 
ment which is a product of its home development. The 
teacher, therefore, is not to be blamed for a child's mal- 
adjustment, because she is coping with a condition that from 



igo PSYCHOANALYSIS 

the very outset was not strictly normal. If a child has not 
done well up to the age of eight, it will always be a ne'er-do- 
well ; if it is defective, its abnormality will become manifest 
at the outset, and it will not outgrow it, as people generally 
suppose. A child shows from the very beginning just what 
the nature of its future adjustment will be. 

It is commonly supposed that the latency period shows no 
sex manifestations. Careful observation, however, points 
very definitely in the opposite direction. It is a period in 
which sex is only apparently absent ; investigate a little and 
you will learn from teachers and parents that all kinds of 
sexual manifestations are in evidence at that age in the class 
room and at home. They are, of course, not so prominent ; 
the child does not usually occupy himself with distinct sexual 
problems. That sexual inquisitiveness of the earlier years 
seems to have lost its keen edge; we hear no more that in- 
sistent query, "Where do children come from?" It either 
has received its information by the age of four or has been 
squelched so well that it dare not ask the parents another 
question. 

The period of object love sets in at the age of nine or ten, 
around the prepubescent age ; the boy and the girl now show 
that they are ready to adjust themselves to the world in a 
definite way. The child no longer shows the same reactions 
to both sexes. At the age of puberty one observes marked 
character changes in both sexes; it is then that the sexual 
factors become manifest and specialized. The boy develops 
into manhood and shows an aggressive sexual make-up, and 
the girl, developing into womanhood evinces a passive or 
negatively aggressive sexuality. I have collected dreams of 
children of about the pubescent age, and it is instructive to 
note how the dreams all showed the definite biological factors 
that may be observed in the development of both sexes ; the 
boys' dreams always dealt with active aggressions, and the 



TYPES OF DREAMS 191 

girls' with passivity, with being pursued, caught or overcome. 
A number of teachers collected for me dreams of pubescent 
children, and no matter from what station of life the children 
came the results were always the same ; their dreams all 
showed the same characteristic biological reactions. It is 
noteworthy that anxiety dreams are particularly prevalent 
among girls of fourteen and fifteen ; for it is at this age that 
the girl becomes aware of the sex urge, but cannot as yet 
place her emotions properly, she has not as yet adjusted her- 
self to the new life. 

The pubescent age is also the period when most mental 
breakdowns start. One of the worst forms of mental 
diseases, dementia praecox, starts at about the ages of four- 
teen and fifteen; probably 75% of the attacks occur between 
the ages of fourteen and eighteen, 90% between the ages of 
fifteen and twenty-five, the others coming later. Indeed, 
dementia praecox has been designated by many writers as 
an insanity of pubescence. As a specialist in nervous 
diseases, I may say that if a child successfully tides over its 
pubescent age, that is, the period from about twelve to fifteen 
years, then there is no cause for apprehension. If every- 
thing goes well at this time, it is indeed rare to find some 
nervous or emotional breakdown in later years. In other 
words, an adequate adjustment now means an adequate ad- 
justment in the future. In this adjustment, of course, the 
sexual or emotional factor is of paramount importance and 
that is why it may be said that an individual who is not well 
adjusted in his emotional or erotic life, remains inadequately 
adjusted in every other phase of his existence. We may 
posit it as a general principle that one's sex life is always re- 
flected in the general psychic condition of the entire person ; 
abnormal sex life always interferes with normal functioning 
in the other spheres of life. 

The biologic principles, or the direct sex demands mani- 



192 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

fest themselves all the time. In the dream they appear in the 
form of anxiety or fear. Let me give you some illustra- 
tions. A woman related to me this dream : A colored man 
pursued her with a knife, and it was only after a long 
struggle that she wrested the deadly weapon from him. She 
awoke, terrified, her heart beating wildly. When I called 
for associations, I learned that her mother was always afraid 
to leave her alone at home because of the colored butler, 
who is a quiet, inoffensive creature. When asked what 
reason she thought her mother had for fearing to leave her 
alone with the servant, she replied, "Well, you know I 
read recently about colored men in the south assaulting 
white women. Mother reads the same paper that I do and 
must have probably read that account also, and so she must 
be more afraid than ever." The dream is simply a realiza- 
tion of a wish ; unconsciously the young woman's own crav- 
ing for sex manifested itself in this concealed way. The ac- 
count that she had read in the newspaper the day before only 
served as a determinant for the dream ; the emotions, the un- 
conscious craving were there all the time waiting for an 
appropriate stimulus to call them into play. 

There is thus not an event occurring in this world but 
what calls forth some repressed emotion in the unconscious, 
and acts as a determinant not only for dreams, but for 
hysterical symptoms and other normal and abnormal phe- 
nomena. Perhaps you may remember the time when there 
was so much ado and excitement about "the poison needle," 
when women were reported to have been taken into white 
slavery by the thousands. Some vicious man, it was ru- 
mored, would stick a poison needle into a girl, drag her into 
a taxi when she fainted and hurry her off to a house of ill 
repute. It mattered little that scientists protested that there 
could be no such poison that would render a person uncon- 
scious immediately. The police were kept quite active and 



TYPES OF DREAMS 193 

arrests were made, but as a matter of fact there was not a 
single authentic case of "the poison needle" throughout the 
United States. It was quite instructive to me to observe that 
there was hardly a woman I was treating at that time who 
did not tell me that she dreamed or fancied about being 
poisoned, attacked and sold into white slavery. 

The unconscious always draws upon the environment for 
expression; it always utilizes some appropriate situation for 
the expression of repressed emotions. I know I may shock 
some of you by asserting that the late war offered an ex- 
cellent outlet to some people ; that is why so many men and 
women experienced nervous breakdowns after the armis- 
tice was signed. I had occasion to see a few soldiers then 
who had gone through the fighting without receiving the 
slightest wound, but who broke down when they came on 
board the ship bound for home. They were supposed to 
have been "shell shocked;" but the real difficulty was that 
they were cut off from an excellent outlet for their primitive 
impulses. The same thing applied to those who did not 
actively participate in the righting ; there were quite a number 
of women who became markedly depressed, as the soldiers 
returned from overseas and were discharged. There was to 
be no more prospect of working in canteens, driving am- 
bulances, nursing the sick heroes in the hospitals. We were 
to have no more of these sadistic or masochistic outlets. And 
what a terrible void opened up before those women! 

In the same way the Titanic disaster acted as a marked 
determinant for dreams. One woman related to me the fol- 
lowing dream relating to the catastrophe: She was on the 
ship when it was sinking; there were the terrible cries of 
panic-stricken women and children. Then some one cried 
out: "Women and children first." She refused to leave 
her husband. An officer came up and tore her away from 
him, despite her loud protests. She woke up crying, seized 



194 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

with terror. I knew this woman's history so thoroughly 
that it was not difficult for me to see at once the meaning of 
the dream. When I asked her for associations there was the 
natural determinant; she had read on the previous day how 
the wife of a prominent man on board the Titanic actually 
refused to be separated from her husband and bravely met 
death with him without flinching. In the dream, as you may 
see, the situation was quite the reverse: she was terribly 
grieved because she was torn away from her husband. Now 
the crux of the whole situation was that she was in love with 
an officer who was stationed right near here ; she experienced 
a great many struggles with herself about the whole affair; 
that was one of the reasons why she came to me for treat- 
ment. Consciously, of course, she would not yield to the 
officer, but unconsciously in the dream, she submits and we 
see her actually separated from her husband. On the one 
hand, then, we see the wish motive, on the other, the anxiety 
which is merely the conflict between the two opposing psy- 
chic forces, representing the converted libido. Thus the 
dream strictly had little to do with the Titanic catastrophe ; 
the latter only served as the medium through which she was 
able to give vent to her repressed emotions. 

The anxiety dreams, then, show a definite form of un- 
conscious reaction to craving, to unadjusted emotions, in 
which the anxiety takes the place of the libido. Later on, 
when we take up day dreaming, we shall see that some 
women go through these mechanisms without sleeping. 
They play with the idea consciously ; they entertain "Durnen 
phantasien," prostitution fancies, quite openly. Such 
women either do not suppress or have sexually emancipated 
themselves. The others can give vent to their unadjusted 
emotions through unconscious mentation, and it is the 
anxiety dream that lends itself to just that type of outlet. 



TYPES OF DREAMS 195 

When we delve into the mainsprings of the dream, we 
find that it is a product of some conscious experience or 
fancy that the individual invariably represses by 
reason of its painful and unattainable nature. p^^g al 
That is why we find, upon investigation, that day SJiyLff 
dreams and fancies which are more or less con- 
scious mental activities, show exactly the same mechanisms 
as the dream, and reveal just as markedly a person's char- 
acter and inner problem. Analysis shows that they are in- 
variably wishes. Thus that spontaneous mental activity 
known as "building castles in the air" enables us to gain as 
profound an insight into the individual's deeper striving and 
desires as the dream itself. 

This intimate relation existing between the dream and 
the day dream is found also between the dream and another 
type of unconscious mentation which may be designated as 
"artificial dreams." By artificial dreams we understand 
those dreams which a person consciously makes up at the re- 
quest of the physician. The patient is requested to make up 
a dream by imitating what he regards as a real dream. He is 
instructed to talk at random without guiding his thoughts. 
The production obtained in this manner is recorded and 
analyzed in accordance with the rules. What the patient 
will produce for you may sound very stupid to him and may 
seem to him to bear no relation to his own inner problems, 
but as a matter of fact you will find, upon analyzing it, that 
it is just as significant as an actual dream and reveals just 
as markedly the deeper problems and conflicts in the psychic 
life. I came upon the subject of artificial dreams in the 
following manner : 

I was treating a physician, an unmarried man, about 
thirty years old, who was suffering from a rather deep-seated 
psychoneurotic disturbance. He was one of those patients 
who claim that they do not dream ; after assuring him, how- 



i 9 6 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

ever, it is merely a question of remembering the dream, he 
came to me one morning and gave me the following dream : 
u l was giving birth to a child, and felt very severe labor 
pains. My friend X. acted as accoucheur (midwife); he 
stuck the forceps into me more like a butcher than a physi- 
cian. Of course," he said, "X. is not a physician, he is 
a business man." I proceeded to analyze the dream by 
asking the patient to tell me something about X. "He is a 
very good friend of mine, but of late we have drifted apart," 
he replied. I was interested to know the reason for this. 
"I did not like some of the people in whom X. was inter- 
ested," I learned. "Is that the only reason why you drifted 
apart?" I continued. "I believe so." The patient then went 
into details about his relationship with X. I observed finally : 
"You seem to be jealous of X." "Yes, that is what X. 
claims." "Well," I went on, "but jealousy is perfectly 
justified only when a person of the opposite sex is concerned, 
but you are jealous when X. talks to other men." He then 
laughed: "You know, I always thought that this dream 
business is claptrap. Now I can see it ; you asked me to give 
you a dream and I thought I would make one up. I never 
dreamed it. I was only fooling you." I must confess I was 
a little surprised to hear this, but his apparently innocent 
piece of fabrication revealed to me all the same the very 
thing I was looking for all the time. A dream such as this 
could only come from a homosexual, and indeed, from the 
very beginning I suspected that he was an invert. I asked 
him to go on with the analysis of the dream but he dryly 
protested, "There's no use ; I made it up." I insisted that he 
continue. He refused and became very angry, whereupon 
I simply told him my analysis. "You are a homosexual, 
and in love with Mr. X. ; only a man who identifies himself 
with a woman dreams that he gives birth to a child." He 
left me in quite a sullen mood, but returned very soon and 



TYPES OF DREAMS 197 

informed me that my diagnosis was correct, but that it was 
hard for him to acknowledge that he was homosexual. 

The case gave me much food for reflection. It demon- 
strated to me very definitely that one can actually resort to 
the analysis of artificial dreams to gain an insight into the 
patient's psychic life. What surprised me at first was that 
we never seemed to have thought about the matter before, 
but upon investigating the subject, I soon found that Prof. 
Bleuler had touched on it, stating that such artificial pro- 
ductions are not at all impossible. Since that case, I resort 
to artificial dreams whenever a patient fails to bring me 
dreams, claiming that he does not dream, or whenever a 
patient suddenly stops dreaming because of some unconscious 
resistance. Analysis of such a dream usually brings to the 
surface those factors which were at the base of these re- 
sistances, which can then be removed. Of course, this is not 
as easy as it may appear, for it is a significant fact that most 
people who insist that they do not dream will declare just as 
strongly that they cannot make up a dream. The same re- 
sistances that hinder them from bringing the physician their 
dreams prevent them also from making up dreams. There 
is no doubt, however, that with continued urging on the 
part of the physician, they can be led to give some produc- 
tions. Here are a few that I have reported. 

"I do something that meets with my parents' disapproval. 
I am afraid of my father, as if I were a child." When I 
asked the dreamer for associations, he replied that he had 
none, but that he would invent another dream. The latter 
ran as follows: "I see an old woman crying. She is evi- 
dently trying to decipher shorthand notes!' He began to 
associate and thought at once of a certain woman, a stenog- 
rapher, his senior by five years. He had met her in a very 
questionable environment, while carousing with friends, fell 
in love with her and offered to marry her. She soon prom- 



198 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

ised to reform, took up stenography, and through his 
influence obtained a position in his father's office. When he 
finally spoke about her to the father, who knew nothing of 
the woman's past, the latter at first refused his consent, but 
later showed signs of relenting. It was then that the patient 
himself began to doubt the wisdom of his contemplated 
matrimonial venture. Most of his friends knew about her 
former life, and strongly advised him against marrying her. 
He knew that he would have to renounce all his social con- 
nections and feared lest his father should discover the true 
facts concerning her past. It was this conflict, coupled 
with other factors, that revived a dormant psychoneurosis. 
I may also add that while under treatment he consciously 
withheld the most important facts in his love affair ; he told 
me nothing about how he met her, or who she was. He did 
not think it was necessary for me to know this. Indeed, 
such things are usually passed over by the patient as being 
trivial and unimportant; he simply does not deem them 
worth while to relate. 

The first production : "I do something that meets with my 
parents' disapproval. I am afraid of my father as if I were 
a child," recalled the patient's early childhood when he often 
feared his father's wrath for wetting the bed. The under- 
lying thought was that should he now enter into this con- 
templated matrimony, he would again soil his bed and be 
punished by his father. The second dream, "I saw an old 
woman crying, etc.," expresses his wish to get rid of the 
woman. She was indeed a poor stenographer and would 
have been discharged long before had it not been for his 
intercession. The dream shows that she leaves voluntarily 
because she cannot hold a position in his family, i.e., she 
cannot be his wife. 

Another patient, Mrs. C, a young married woman suffer- 
ing from a mild form of dementia prsecox, gave me, after 



TYPES OF DREAMS 199 

strong urging, the following artificial dream. Patients of 
the dementia prsecox type are usually very inaccessible and 
the artificial dream is often the only way of entering into 
their mind. "I went into a garden where there were many 
people. One of the ladies fell in love with one of the gentle- 
men sitting on the bench. They exchanged all sorts of 
endearing terms until the lady proposed marriage. They 
married and were very happy." This dream is quite simple : 
it shows little distortion, it is a sort of open wish. As Mrs. 
C. is a married woman the question that naturally suggests 
itself is: "Who is the man?" Certainly he is not her own 
husband; there would be no need for that. The dreamer 
herself apparently is under the disguise of the lady who 
proposed to the gentleman, in accordance with the well- 
known principle of dream analysis, that the dreamer is 
always the central figure in the dream. Mrs. C. was a 
shut-in type of person, extremely inaccessible. Whenever I 
made any efforts to question her about her intimate life, she 
would say : "I am perfectly happy with my husband. I have 
nothing to tell you." But when I asked her to tell me the 
person, the "gentleman," in the dream recalled to her, she 
immediately informed me that it was the family physician; 
she remembered distinctly that the physician looked very 
much like him. As she could give me very little further 
information, I observed: "It would seem that you had an 
amour with the physician, or that you undoubtedly desired 
to have one." She admitted that for years she had been very 
attached to the doctor. She did not tell me of this before, 
because she could not see what bearing it had upon the treat- 
ment. And yet, I must have you mark very carefully, it is 
the conflict arising from this experience that finally precipi- 
tated her mental condition ; it was the exciting factor of the 
disease. 

Since my experience with that first patient who deliber- 



200 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

ately attempted to mislead me by making up what he thought 
a senseless production, I have collected quite a number of 
artificial dreams. Though most of them are by no means 
as simple as those I have just given you, they all may very 
readily be analyzed; indeed, they are easier to analyze than 
actual dreams. 

Let me say at this point that one of the objections to dream 
analysis advanced by some investigators is that the dreamer 
in recounting the dream consciously or unconsciously fills up 
the gaps which originally existed in the dream and thus 
introduces elements that strictly do not belong to it; they 
maintain that the dream that you commit to writing is no 
longer the real dream, a great deal of it is forgotten, and 
much new material creeps in. But you see how this makes 
no material difference in the analysis, for whatever the 
dreamer inserts into the dream bears an intimate relation 
to his own inner problems : the dreamer consciously or un- 
consciously will always gravitate toward his own inner 
strivings. 

My experience with artificial dreams led me into quite 
another field of investigation, the problem of lying. Con- 
siderable study and experience convinced me that the lie, 
like the dream, is nothing but a direct or indirect wish. 
Every piece of fabrication, whether simple or complex, 
represents essentially a condition that the person desires to 
see realized. Frankly, I am sometimes pleased when a 
patient lies to me, either quite deliberately or unconsciously; 
he is thereby only giving me another clue to his neurosis. 
For every lie, even in a normal person, is but an expression 
of the wish-motive, and deals naturally with material of 
marked importance and interest in the individual concerned. 

Lying is one of the defense mechanisms that helps the 
individual out of difficulties. When done with that in view, 
the lie is often designated as a "white lie." Thus we have 



TYPES OF DREAMS 201 

a double standard of lying, the "white lie" which is pardon- 
able, and the lie made with malicious intent, or done habitu- 
ally, just for the sake of lying. That the "white lie" is just 
another mode of self -protection, that it has, we might say, 
as useful a function as teeth and claws, is well borne out by 
the fact that primitive people and lower races, like the 
negroes and Indians, for example, invariably lie when they 
wish to get out of some difficulty. The same condition 
obtains among children. They invariably show a tendency 
to fabricate. Such a tendency among children cannot be 
considered pathological. It simply denotes a premature 
mentality; children, as we know, have not as yet assumed 
all the necessary ethical inhibitions and therefore follow their 
impulses. Whenever they find themselves in any difficulty 
they do not hesitate to get out of it through lying. Thus 
a boy of four, having broken a dish, insisted that a servant 
did it; an older boy, having been detected playing truant, 
asserted that his teacher was sick. 

We should always assume a more or less sensible attitude 
to lying in children. They should be taught, of course, not 
to do so, but it is to be expected and regarded as more or 
less natural. They should be trained to tell the truth with- 
out resorting to emotional outbursts, for it is certain that we 
can always accomplish much more with the child by entering 
into rapport with him, by gaining his confidence and love. 
How much harm is often done by resorting to marked 
emotionalism in our attitude toward the child's lie may be 
seen from the following case: 

Mrs. F., a woman of thirty-five, married, complained 
among other things, of having a very strong tendency to lie. 
As far as I could observe, she was perfectly normal mentally, 
so that one could regard her condition as merely a bad habit. 
But we know, from psychoanalytic study and experience, 
that there must be something in the individual's psychic life 



202 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

that feeds that habit, that gives it its motive force. Apropos 
of the symptom, her history was as follows: At the age of 
eight she lived in a small locality where, among the very few 
children who played with her there was a boy of eleven with 
whom she associated very much. One day he exposed 
himself to her, and she played sexually with him. This con- 
tinued for a few months perhaps, when her grandmother 
noticed it. The boy got a terrible beating and the girl re- 
ceived a good tongue lashing, although she was more or less 
excused as she was only a little girl. She was not allowed, 
however, to see her companion any more. Her mother, who 
was away at this time, presently returned and the little girl, 
in an outburst of confidence related everything that occurred 
during her absence, not failing to mention also the experience 
with the little boy. Far from being pleased that her daughter 
voluntarily and frankly revealed to her what transpired be- 
tween the two children, she flew into a rage and beat the 
little girl most severely, despite the fact that she had never 
before administered any form of corporal punishment to the 
child. She then locked her up in a room and kept her there 
on bread and water for quite a while. Following this, she 
continued to remind the girl all the time of the terrible 
transgression that was committed. When twelve years old, 
the girl attended with her mother a funeral of a boy of 
fourteen who met with an accident and was killed. On her 
way to the funeral, the mother observed: "When you get 
there, you will see his parents in a state of terrible anguish ; 
they feel heart broken at the death of their young boy, 
snatched from them at so young an age. But do you know, 
I would have rather seen you die than to have done what 
you did?" That is how stupidly and deeply the mother 
reacted to the situation. The grandmother would accord- 
ingly remind the girl: "Now you see, if you only had kept 
your tongue, as I told you to do." That marked a turning 



TYPES OF DREAMS 203 

point in the patient's whole life. There was a marked change 
in her relations to her mother and to the world. She now 
lied frequently to her parent : she actually "kept her tongue" 
as her grandmother had wisely counselled her. And as she 
reacted to the mother she gradually reacted to the whole 
world; what happened was that unconsciously she was con- 
stantly trying to rebel against her mother by no longer 
revealing the truth as she did on that unfortunate occasion. 
The symptom caused her much discomfort and unpleasant- 
ness. Sometimes, for instance, she would be out socially, and 
in speaking about some book or play would deliberately 
distort the facts. She was conscious of it, but could do 
nothing to correct the condition, it was a sort of obsession 
with her. 

Such cases are not at all rare. They are found among 
people who are normal intellectually and who cannot be con- 
sidered in any sense psychopathic. The fundamental reason 
for the symptom may usually be traced to just such an 
emotionally accentuated occurrence, as we have noted in 
Mrs. F.'s case. 

With the advance of age we are expected to tell the truth, 
and the average normal person can do so to a certain extent. 
The lies then serve a definite purpose. They are usually 
well balanced and sometimes even very ingenious and com- 
plicated. The same holds true in the abnormal classes; the 
greater the intellect, the more difficult it is to detect the lie. 
Moral idiots and superior degenerates often make such good 
impressions that they frequently escape detection for a long 
time, while it is simple enough to see through the lies of 
children, of most mental defectives and insane. On the 
other hand, the lowest type, the idiot, is usually incapable 
of telling a lie. His extreme mental poverty allows him to 
follow unhindered all his simple desires ; he has not enough 
brains to formulate a lie. He is therefore honesty personified. 



204 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

That telling the truth among normals is considered as some- 
thing verging on the impossible is shown by the fact that 
one of the greatest attributes of the Father of this country- 
is that he never told a lie. As a matter of fact every normal 
person tells a lie on certain occasions, and provided certain 
conditions are fulfilled, it is not counted against him even if 
he is detected. 

To be called a liar, a person must not only show a frequent 
tendency to fabricate but must also evince a certain weak- 
mindedness in its execution. Thus a well-bred, apparently 
intelligent woman had the reputation of being a liar. When 
I met her for the first time, we had occasion to speak of a 
well-known physician. She remarked that this doctor was 
much devoted to her. "He kisses me whenever I leave the 
office," she went on to declare. Noticing my great surprise, 
for it was indeed an anomalous condition for me to imagine, 
as I knew the man intimately, she added, "I am j*ust like a 
daughter to him." I am sure that such behavior was abso- 
lutely foreign to him. This woman was psychopathic and 
was well known as a habitual liar. 

A doctor of this same type told me once that he worked 
in a certain clinic in Europe with which I was very well 
acquainted. We spoke about the professor who was at the 
head of the department, and he remarked: "Prof. X. thinks 
so much of me that he sent me the proof sheets of a book 
he just wrote and asked me to correct them and make any 
suggestions I deem fit." Every lie, like every dream, must 
be determined by something. I knew the determinant of 
this: the professor was actually to have given out a new 
edition of the book referred to. "Do you mean the third 
edition of his . . .?" I interposed. "Why, I have the book 
home already ; it just came to me." He protested vehemently 
that this could not be and turned away terribly piqued. Both 
these individuals (the woman mentioned above and this 



TYPES OF DREAMS 205 

doctor) are well-known liars among their friends and ac- 
quaintances. We have a special name for their malady, — 
"pseudologia phantastica." People of this type have con- 
stantly a desire to fill up the voidness in themselves. 

I once had a patient who upon coming late would declare 
apologetically: "Doctor, I am sorry I am late; I just dined 
with the Duchess of Devonshire." At first I did not know 
whether to believe him or not. He would go into details 
about the Duchess, inform me who her grandmother was and 
relate many other intimate facts. At another time he said 
he dined with the Duke. He kept that up for a week, when 
I discovered that there was not an iota of truth in what he 
said. He had delusions of grandeur and tried in this way 
to realize his abnormal wishes. He thought that he was an 
illegitimate child and that he came from the nobility. He 
had made a study of English nobility and was thus able to 
play his part pretty well. I have no doubt that as time went 
on he began to believe in the deception himself. 

It is a known fact that eventually ordinary liars believe 
their lies and thus realize their wishes. A few years ago I 
often heard an acquaintance tell of his interesting experiences 
in a military academy, where he said he spent a few years. 
I was very much surprised to find years later when I 
analyzed him that he never saw this academy. He told me 
that at the age of ten years he was attracted to a boy, a mili- 
tary student, and entertained a very strong wish to enter 
this military academy. He took a great interest in military 
life, and read much about this school, but owing to financial 
difficulties, his ardent wish could never be realized. When 
he applied for his first position, he boldly stated that he 
attended this school, and as the lie remained unnoticed, he 
stuck to it for years and finally believed that he actually 
studied there for a long time. 

In this connection, it is interesting to note that tendencies 



206 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

to fabricate can be produced by exogenous factors. I am 
referring to Korsakoff's psychosis, a condition found among 
alcoholics. Here the poison having destroyed life-long inhi- 
bitions, the patients find it very easy to tell the most phantastic 
and embellished adventures. They never become embarrassed 
when brought to bay, because their mental processes are 
paralyzed. Ask such a patient, who is confined to bed, what 
he did in the morning and he replies most cheerfully : "I have 
been out and walked down on Broadway and went into a 

saloon on 23rd Street, met Mr , etc." And all the 

time he was in bed, but he makes the story so specific that 
one who does not know, finds it difficult not to believe him. 
All we have to do is to give him the slightest suggestion and 
he has a long story ready. Ask him for some money, and 
he will at once begin to search for his trousers, though he 
really has not a cent that he can call his own. There are 
no inhibitions whatever, everything runs smoothly; it is a 
state of euphoria. Indeed, we may say weak-mindedness 
due to any cause permits ambitions to run riot, and as the 
individual finds it impossible to realize them, he makes believe 
to his fellow-being that he has actually accomplished all his 
mighty deeds. In this respect, he resembles the prolific 
dreamer who has many wishes to fulfill, but whereas the 
latter by virtue of ethical inhibitions can only realize his 
desires in sleep, the psychopathic liar, who has never fully 
developed mental inhibitions, puts his wishes in operation in 
the waking state. 

Some lies manifest themselves in very peculiar ways. 
Thus, I knew a patient, a young woman, who suddenly 
stopped urinating. No amount of urging on the part of 
the physicians in the sanitarium where she was treated could 
cause her to attend to this bodily function. Sometimes she 
maintained that she could not attend to these wants, other 
times that she simply felt no need for them. And, strange 



TYPES OF DREAMS 207 

to say, while the doctors were seriously concerned over her 
ailment she secretly appropriated towels and used them as 
receptacles for her excretions, which she then threw out of 
the window. Here the lie was determined by a reversion 
to infantile eroticisms manifesting themselves in the desire 
to solicit the doctor's attention to the genitals. This case 
recalls Prof. Virchow's case of Louise Lateau, who refused 
to take food because she maintained that she was a saint and 
needed no nourishment. Virchow ascertained that she had 
regular movements of the bowels and decided that she was 
secretly taking nourishment. For, he argued, and surely 
with good reason, that though the Lord created the world out 
of nothing, no mortal could produce matter out of nothing. 
Those of you who are interested in cases of this kind, will 
find much interesting material in the police records. They 
make up the classes of international swindlers, charlatans, 
malingerers, etc. 

The liar shows a definite relation to the born criminal from 
whom he differs only in degree. The latter being usually 
lower in the mental scale does not even have to lie; he sees 
something that he wants and straightway sets out to get it. 
And that is why, as we have pointed out previously, the 
criminal dreams considerably less than the average normal 
person: he actually realizes many more of his wishes than 
his normal brother. 

The liar is also related to the poet, who may be called an 
artificial dreamer or a convention fabricator. Prof. Prescott 
in his interesting study of Poetry and Dreams expresses 
himself as follows on the origin of poetry: "It represents 
the fulfillment of our ungratified wishes or desires." The 
same mechanism is found in habitual liars, and to a lesser 
degree, in every normal person. What is the distinction 
between them? The normal dissatisfied person contents 
himself with fancy formation which he keeps to himself very 



208 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

carefully. He does not wish to reveal his secret desires 
because he is ashamed to do so and, what is more, he knows 
that we will not be interested in them. The liar has never 
outgrown his infancy, so that even as an adult his fancies, 
his wishes are of a childish nature; he is unable to adapt 
himself to reality, so that he constructs his world on the 
infantile foundation. His fancies are therefore character- 
ized throughout by extreme egotism. He is the hero of 
every adventure, the "sine qua non" in every situation. That 
is why he repels us, for we do not like to see another indi- 
vidual behave so ail-importantly. The poet or writer over- 
comes these difficulties by toning down the egotistic character 
of his fancies. He conceals them under the hero, and that 
is why his productions give us pure aesthetic pleasure. We 
are fascinated by the situation because it offers us the op- 
portunity to put ourselves into the hero's place, and our 
pleasure is thus derived from deep psychic sources. In 
other words, the poet offers us an enticing premium or a 
forepleasure, whereby we may release some of our own 
mental and emotional tension. But the liar, like the child, 
wants everything and obtains pleasure solely in reciting to 
others his egotistic adventures. 

I now propose to take up a class of dreams known as 
typical dreams. We classify them under that heading because 
Typical there is hardly a person who does not have them 
Dreams a |- some time of his life. One of the most com- 
mon of the typical dreams is the dream of being naked. As 
Charles Dickens has so happily put it, it is a dream that 
everybody has, "from Queen Elizabeth to her most humble 
gaoler." He describes it quite characteristically: we find 
ourselves naked in a crowd; though no one seems to notice 
us or pay us the slightest attention, we ourselves are greatly 
embarrassed. The dream is sometimes also modified. In- 



TYPES OF DREAMS 209 

stead of being naked, the dreamer is not dressed as he should 
be. With all the others in evening clothes at a ball, for in- 
stance, he may find himself in every-day attire; or if he is 
in the army, he may find himself dressed contrary to the 
regulations. Such dreams go back to the earliest period of 
childhood, when the child is naked and experiences no feeling 
of shame. Prof. Freud declares that this age of childhood 
in which the sense of shame is not present seems to our later 
recollections a paradise, and the idea of paradise itself is 
nothing but a composite phantasy from the childhood of the 
individual. It is for this reason that in paradise human 
being are naked and are not at all ashamed. When the child 
grows older, the sense of shame and fear is aroused; it is 
then that sexual life and cultural development begin. The 
problem of nakedness is not only found in the story of Adam 
and Eve, but is quite a dominant theme in fairy tales. You 
may all recall Andersen's fascinating story of the two rogues 
who wove that wonderful cloak for the king that only those 
could see who were truly fit for their positions. You re- 
member that neither the king nor his court nor the populace 
would admit that nothing was seen; every one was afraid 
to confess the truth lest he thus betray his unfitness for his 
particular position, and admired the garment immensely. It 
remained for a little child to disclose openly that the king 
was really naked and thus put an end to the ruse. Observe 
how the unconscious, with which we may identify the child, 
always tells the truth. 

What do these dreams of nakedness represent? Accord- 
ing to Prof. Freud they are exhibition dreams. We must 
bear in mind that despite the fact that we are perfectly 
reconciled to our ethical criteria, we unconsciously live 
through many of the infantile states. We still like to walk 
about naked as we did when we were children. There is 
no greater pleasure that you can give to children than to 



210 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

allow them to walk about naked; it is quite common for 
travelers to see children in certain parts of Europe exhibit 
themselves. Indeed, I have no doubt that Andersen's story 
itself is a reminiscence of the author's own exhibitionism, of 
his own unconscious craving to appear naked. We see this 
reversion to infantile feelings even in the waking state. As 
you may know, the whole art of dressmaking always aims 
at one thing, — discovering some new way of displaying the 
woman's body, of rendering prominent those parts of the 
body which attract men. The decollete and the evening 
dresses we see at the opera and at the dinner are markedly 
exhibitionistic despite the fact that they are worn by highly 
respectable ladies. It is also a matter of common observation 
that the woman who is not very proud of her physical make- 
up is by no means eager to display it. 

The next typical dream is the dream of the death of rela- 
tives. I feel that everybody has had dreams of this nature. 
The dreamer is usually very much affected by the death and 
reacts to it in the dream just as deeply as in the waking state. 
Of course, in view of the fact that our dreams are wish 
realizations a great many will be shocked and wonder why 
you should wish your relatives to die. Such dreams usually 
go back to very early childhood when the conception of 
death held no terror to the child, when death merely involved 
absence. A little child cannot conceive the real significance 
of the fact ; all that he understands is that the father is just 
away on his vacation perhaps, or on a trip. He does not have 
the same reaction to death that we observe in the adult. The 
child often welcomes this protracted absence, for he is thus 
freed from the restraint that his father imposed upon him. 

In the same way it may seem strange to dream of the 
death of one's sister in view of our fundamental thesis that 
the dream represents essentially a hidden wish. But we find 
that if there are two sisters in the home the older child will 



TYPES OF DREAMS 211 

usually impose her will upon the younger one. The younger 
child is helpless, but in the absence of her sister she is able 
to enjoy a degree of freedom and independence that she 
could not have before. In one particular case of two married 
sisters, for instance, the younger one dreamed that her sister 
was dead and experienced all the emotions that go with 
mourning. Upon analysis it was found that her dream went 
back to her childhood when she was dominated by her sister. 
She did not wish so much in the dream that the sister were 
dead in the real sense of the word, but that she were away. 
This is the basic significance of all dreams of this type ; we 
are dealing here with a situation representing an infantile 
wish. 

There are a number of dreams, however, describing the 
death of a relative in which we find no sadness, no grief, 
no affective elements whatsoever. We have here an alto- 
gether different situation. Such dreams do not denote death 
at all. I reported, for example, the case of a man who 
related to me how he dreamed that he saw his brother with 
his head cut open and was by no means affected by the 
terrible sight; it seemed quite natural to him to see his 
brother in that condition. It is noteworthy that he came 
to me some time before the dream and asked me whether I 
thought there was any substance in what he read in the 
newspapers about trephining a defective boy's head to make 
him well. I assured him that that was all nonsense and 
impossible. His brother was quite a serious problem to him 
and the dream, far from expressing the wish that his brother 
were dead, expressed his ardent desire that he be cured. 

I would have you note also a type of dream in which the 
sister dreams of the death of her brother. The relations 
between brother and sister are not at all as amicable and 
harmonious as we generally suppose. Our ethical training 
enjoins upon us to live harmoniously and we realize that 



212 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

we ought to be good and just to our sisters and brothers. 
But frankly, I have never observed more bitter enmities 
than between brothers and sisters. They know how to hate 
because they know also how to love. I have analyzed many 
a dream which, shocking though it was to the moral principle 
of the dreamer, contained nevertheless the remnants of this 
early hatred between brother and sister. Thus an intelligent 
cultured woman dreamed that her brother was dead. The 
situation was that her mother had left some money which 
her brother was planning to appropriate despite the fact that 
she needed it far more urgently than he. But I would have 
you mark very carefully that in reality this woman would 
rather do without the money than have her brother die. In 
the unconscious, however, we are living through our child- 
hood, we are primitive and absolutely egocentric, we are 
concerned with problems solely as they affect us. In the 
unconscious our wishes balk at nothing: we are ready to 
dispatch through death or any other means any person who 
stands in our way. 

Very often, too, our secret desires may be unconsciously 
realized even in the waking state. I have reported the case 
of a noted physician in New York who was hurriedly called 
away from his home to the bedside of his sick, old uncle. 
When he came he did not take over the charge of the case, 
because everything possible was done for the patient by his 
own family physicians. All hope for the patient's recovery 
was abandoned and his death was expected every day. But 
despite the many complications, the patient held on to life 
tenaciously and days passed without any marked apparent 
change. His nephew became quite anxious to return to 
New York as soon as possible, as there was a very busy 
practice awaiting him, and what was more, there was illness 
in his own family. One evening the uncle became very ill, 
and as the attending physicians were away, he gave him a 



TYPES OF DREAMS 213 

hypodermic to stimulate his heart. Very shortly the old man 
died. When he later looked at the vial from which he took 
the drug, he found, to his great consternation, that instead 
of giving him strychnin, he gave him hyoscine, a drug that 
has exactly the opposite action of strychnin. In other 
words, he actually killed the patient. Consciously, of course, 
he did not wish to kill him, and in his terrible mortification, 
he consoled himself in the thought that he would have died 
soon anyway. The physician unconsciously hastened the 
man's death in his great eagerness to return to his home. He 
informed me of this, years after it happened : he assured me 
that he revealed the fact to no one; he merely wished to 
corroborate what I said in one of my psychoanalytic papers. 
I learnt also, that when a boy, he had many dreams of the 
death of this very uncle, and indeed very often actually 
wished that the man were dead. The boy's father died when 
the child was very young, and the uncle was unusually severe 
with him. Though he became more and more attached to 
him as he grew older, it would seem that the coup de grace 
did not lack hostile motivation. 

In the unconscious, then, our own immediate welfare takes 
precedence over every other consideration: father, brother, 
sister, and relative are only of minor importance. Thus an 
important question to ask yourself in dream analysis is "cui 
bono," to whose advantage is the underlying situation in the 
dream? If it is to the advantage of the dreamer, or in other 
words, if it falls in line with his secret inner demands and 
strivings, then the dream has its significance only in terms of 
that situation and no other, for the dream always deals with 
problems of the most intimate personal character. The 
dream is always egocentric. 

There is another typical dream dealing with the death of 
the father, that we find particularly among young sons. We 
have to consider here the primitive state of the human being. 



2i 4 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

There is always a rivalry between father and son for the 
love of the mother, and this, despite the fact that the father 
may love his boy very dearly. The son has learned that he 
receives much more attention and love from his mother, and 
is treated more leniently in the father's absence. In this type 
of dream, therefore, we see the desire on the part of the 
child to get rid of his father. It is really surprising to note 
how many boys dream openly as well as disguisedly of the 
death of their father. These dreams are even more common 
than those dealing with the death of the teacher, for the 
latter plays a smaller part in the child's psychic life than the 
father. For one thing the teacher comes into his life at a 
later period and as he is not surrounded with the halo of 
parental sanctity, hostile feelings against the teacher are 
generally quite conscious. 

We call such dreams of the death of the father CEdipus 
dreams, because, according to Prof. Freud, to whom we are 
indebted for the name, they bring to light an essentially 
human situation that has found most fitting expression in 
Sophocles' noted tragedy of "CEdipus Rex." You remember 
the story: 

Laius, the King of Thebes, married Jocasta. After years 
of childless marriage, Laius visited the Delphian Apollo and 
prayed for a child. The answer of the god was as follows : 
"Your prayer has been heard and a son will be given to you, 
but you will die at his hand, for Zeus decided to fulfill the 
curse of Polybos, whose son you have once kidnaped." In 
spite of the warning the son was born, but remembering the 
oracle, the child's feet were pierced and tied, and he was 
delivered to a faithful servant to be exposed. The latter, 
however, gave the child to a Corinthian shepherd who took 
it to his master, the King of Corinth, who, being childless, 
adopted it and called it CEdipus, meaning swollen feet. 
When the boy grew up into manhood he became uncertain 



TYPES OF DREAMS 215 

of his own origin, and consulting the oracle, received the 
following message : "Do not return home for thou art des- 
tined to kill thy father and marry thy mother." In order 
to avoid the fulfillment of this prophecy (Edipus at once 
left Corinth and accidentally wandered toward Thebes. On 
the way he met King Laius and in a sudden altercation with 
him struck him dead. He then came to the gates of Thebes, 
where he solved the riddle of the Sphinx who barred his 
way. As a reward for ridding Thebes of this scourge he 
was elected king and presented with the hand of the widowed 
queen, Jocasta. He reigned in peace for many years and 
begot two sons and two daughters with his unknown mother, 
until a plague broke out which caused the Thebans to consult 
the oracle. The messenger returned with the advice that the 
plague would cease as soon as the murderer of King Laius 
would be driven from the country. Sophocles then develops 
the play in a psychoanalytic manner until the true relations 
are discovered, namely, that (Edipus killed his own father 
and married his own mother. The tragedy ends by (Edipus 
blinding himself and wandering away into voluntary exile. 

According to Prof. Freud this noted Greek tragedy depicts 
a typical situation found in the psychic life of every indi- 
vidual, that undoubtedly Sophocles wrote the play as a 
reaction to his own feelings towards his father and his 
attachment to his mother. Indeed, Freud has pointed out 
that there are many passages in the play which very definitely 
demonstrate that it was based upon dream material. We 
find, for instance, that when (Edipus was so profoundly 
mortified by the true facts of the tragedy, his mother Jocasta 
consoles him in one passage thus : "Do not worry over this, 
because many a man has found himself in his dreams the 
partner of his mother's bed, but those go through life best 
who take those things as trifles." It would seem then, that 



216 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

the author had grasped the full psychological import of what 
appears to be a universal situation. 

(Edipus dreams or dreams involving sexual relations with 
one's immediate family are very common. It is noteworthy 
that when I first wrote a paper on the subject I had col- 
lected probably only forty or fifty dreams of this type. But 
upon its publication I began to receive numerous letters from 
various people, all of whom had the same story to relate: 
"I was so shocked by these dreams, — I thought I was the 
only one to have them. But I am relieved to know that they 
are quite common." That was the general tenor of the com- 
munications. We may say, then, that it is everybody's fate, 
as it were, to be a rival of his own father and have his first 
love directed towards his own mother. Such a situation has 
a profound influence upon the individual's whole life. We 
shall meet it again when we discuss the subject of the only 
child. It is absolutely necessary to understand it in order 
to form the proper adjustment to life. 

All such dreams are in the final analysis a reaction to the 
tyrannical part played by the father in the household. The 
tyranny of father over son is a subject which stands out 
prominently in folklore and mythology; the struggle be- 
tween the Greek gods is essentially a conflict between father 
and son. It is also quite a common theme in literature. I 
now recall, for instance, that in one year there were no less 
than five plays running in New York which dealt with the 
rivalry between father and son. In fact the (Edipus trend 
is more common in literature than is generally supposed. I 
have recently read an article by a well-known playreader in 
New York in which the writer stated that he could not 
understand why authors should deal so much with topics of 
the (Edipus character. He went on to assert that many 
excellent plays had to be rejected because the theme is too 
delicate; the love between mother and son or sister and 



TYPES OF DREAMS 217 

brother is too grossly evident. You see the sister is usually 
a substitute for the mother. 

We shall learn later, that when the normal sexual develop- 
ment is retarded through an over-indulgence in love for the 
son on the part of the mother, a fixation on the mother may 
result. When we say that the man is fixed on the mother or 
the woman on the father, we do not mean the parents as they 
look to-day but as they appeared when the children were 
still infants. At that early age of the child's life the mother 
and father looked different and also behaved differently. The 
influence of such a fixation upon the parent is only too ap- 
parent in the later selection of the adult. Given a number 
of women to choose from, a man will invariably select the 
woman that has been more or less selected for him in the 
unconscious. That is to say, if everything is normal he will 
be guided from the very outset by the image of his own 
mother. If conditions are not normal, however, his selec- 
tion will be controlled by the reaction formed against it. 

Consider, for instance, the case of Mr. B., who informed 
me that as far as he could remember he was always attracted 
to women of the Grecian type, tall, well formed and well 
developed. And though he married a woman of that type, he 
could not understand why his grand passion was for a woman 
of the opposite type, that is to say, more like the French or 
the petite type. When we investigate his life we find that 
his mother was of French descent, of the French type. The 
question naturally suggests itself, why should he have been 
drawn to women of the opposite type or, in other words, to 
women so radically different from the mother image? Upon 
first thought we might say that such a condition is only proof 
of nature's far-sightedness in trying to preserve the proper 
balance, for if like were to attract like we would have on 
the one hand, one might say, a race of giants, and on the 
other, a race of pigmies. But the explanation is not so 



218 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

simple. In speaking to Mr. B. about his mother, he recalled 
that he never forgave his father for actually poking fun at 
his mother on two different occasions because of her small 
stature, and how deeply touched he felt at some of the dis- 
paraging remarks directed at her on that very account by 
various other people. It is not difficult to see what happened 
here. Consciously Mr. B was always trying to tear himself 
away from that particular short-coming of his mother by 
seeking tall women. But in the unconscious he gravitated 
toward the mother image, and accordingly experienced his 
grand passion only when he met the type of woman that 
approached most closely her type. As you see, then, we 
are very often negatively influenced by these early attractions. 
In normal cases the individual always gravitates toward the 
parent image, and it is for this reason that husband and wife 
resemble each other's parents. I have seen numerous cases 
where the wife resembled the husband's mother or sister to 
such an unusual degree that one could hardly tell the 
difference between the two. Thus a New York boy upon the 
death of his father left his home and went to California, 
where he was brought up by an uncle. When he married 
he came east with his wife on his honeymoon, and the mo- 
ment his mother saw her she declared that the latter looked 
just like his younger sister Jane. In fact, she insisted that 
she saw the marked resemblance from the photograph her 
son had sent her, but she was quite sure of it now. He 
walked with his wife on the avenue one day and his sister's 
classmate, who did not live in New York, ran up to her and 
kissed her warmly, thinking that she was her friend Jane. 
People mistook his wife for his sister so frequently that he 
finally began to become aware of the resemblance himself. 
I have five photographs, three of his wife and two of his 
sister, pasted on a cardboard and I have shown them to 
quite a number of people, some of whom are artists, and 



TYPES OF DREAMS 219 

there was only one man who could tell the difference be- 
tween the two women. This he did by resorting to such 
devices as measuring the angle of the chin and so on. It 
was absolutely impossible for the average observer to dis- 
tinguish between the two women. The problem of resem- 
blance has been noted by many students who were not at all 
working psychologically in our sense. Pearson, an English- 
man, for instance, has investigated this subject on a physical 
basis, studying the color of the hair, stature, color of the 
eyes, etc., and formulated the conclusion that judging from 
physical resemblances married people look more like first 
cousins than strangers. 

It is because the artist also actually gravitates towards 
some more or less definite image that we have the Madonna 
cult. It is needless to say that the various studies of the 
virgin Mary are all the products of artists who did not live 
at the time of the Madonna. None of them really knew 
how she actually looked, and indeed if she resembled any 
type of woman at all, she must have resembled the Jewish 
woman. It is noteworthy that a German artist has recently 
actually painted a Madonna of the Jewish type. Careful 
study shows that the Madonnas that we see everywhere are 
really nothing but idealized images of the artist's own mother. 
Thus Madonnas painted by Italian artists resemble the 
Italian woman, those by Spaniards the Spanish woman, and 
so on. Study for a moment Leonardo Da Vinci's St. Anna 
and the Child and you will at once observe how much they 
resemble his own Mona Lisa; they all seem to have that 
peculiar Leonardesque quality, that enigmatic smile that we 
hear so much about. In the same way also his John the 
Baptist bears a marked resemblance to his Mona Lisa and 
it is quite common to mistake him for a young woman. We 
may say that in all these paintings the artist has unconsciously 
reproduced the image of his own mother. They are all 



220 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

reproductions of the artist's ideal image of his mother. I 
have ample corroboration of this in the artistic productions 
of modern artists whose lives I know intimately, but unfor- 
tunately material of this character cannot be divulged at 
present. 



CHAPTER IX 
TYPES OF DREAMS (Continued) 

As there has been considerable objection to dreams of the 
death of parents, it may be wise to analyze with you a dream 
of this type given to me by a patient. It will show you very 
definitely how even later in life one dreams of the death of 
parents, though, of course, by no means openly as in child- 
hood, but in a hidden, veiled way. Mrs. B. dreamed that 
two old people, a man who seemed to be her father only 
that he looked much older, and a woman who seemed to be 
his wife and resembled her grandmother, or, more definitely, 
her mother's mother, were starting for a walk. "I was ill, 
at least in bed, so I told the people around me to follow them. 
No one wanted to, so I got up and followed them. They 
walked through the dining room, passed a pantry, and then 
came to another pantry which was open. As the old woman 
seemed unsteady on her feet, I called to the man to hold her 
back; just then he opened the door and pushed her down 
and she was killed, as he wished. He turned his head, saw 
that I was there and realized that I noticed everything. I 
wrote down the dream and went back to bed and dreamed the 
same dream over again, only this time I stepped back so that 
the old man did not see that I saw him commit the murder." 

Mrs. B., a woman of thirty, suffered from a pro- 
found psychoneurosis. Her father and mother had been 
living apart for over twenty years and were total strangers 
to each other, and this, despite the fact that they both lived 
under the same roof. This was as well known to outsiders 

221 



222 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

as to the children themselves, but somehow the parents did 
not care to separate. What was more, the children knew 
that the father had a mistress who was his former stenog- 
rapher ; their sympathies were entirely with him, for, from 
their descriptions, the mother was apparently a paranoiac. 
They considered her insane and felt that she made the 
father's life miserable. Mrs. B. even claimed that she had 
no objection to her father's amour with the stenographer. 
She knew the young woman personally and held her in high 
regard. But she always entertained a more or less deep- 
seated dislike for her, for she realized that she was being 
deprived by her of a good deal of the father' affection, she 
saw in her a rival of his love. She experienced what we 
designate in our work the ambivalent feeling, a feeling of 
contrast: the individual loves and hates, as it were, at the 
same time. Love and hate go hand in hand. When one 
loves deeply the more or less disagreeable characteristics of 
the person will be completely concealed under the love. A 
man who is in love will see nothing of that which other 
persons consider a marked blemish in his inamorata. This 
ambivalency of feeling is a well-known mechanism and we 
should try to understand it. In ordinary life, of course, we 
can usually separate the two feelings : "He is a good teacher, 
but he knows so little about life," you may say about your 
teacher. "He is a very fine man, but lacks character as far 
as business is concerned," you may think to yourself about 
your employer. But when it concerns one whom we love 
or are supposed to love, we have to hide the disagreeable 
phase of his character. "He is a fine father, but a despic- 
able man," one cannot say about his father. A mother would 
never observe: "My daughter is very accomplished, but not 
quite well behaved morally." We do not see the shortcom- 
ings of those we love or are supposed to love. But uncon- 



TYPES OF DREAMS 223 

sciously we are well aware of them; though we hide them 
they keep on growing luxuriously in the unconscious. 

Mrs. B. was married to a man whom she did not wish 
to marry originally. She had been engaged to him for a 
number of years, but somehow it was one of those chronic 
engagements. Like a chronic wound, — a chronic engage- 
ment never works well. Usually the long-engaged fiancee 
or her lover marries some one else suddenly, or if they do 
marry eventually, they are never happy. It does not at all 
bespeak happiness in matrimony when the fiancee confidently 
declares : "I have known him ever so long." We must re- 
member that the love impulse is normally acute and ve- 
hement and sees things through at all costs. Anything 
chronic, even in love, is not good. It is not surprising, then, 
that when Mrs. B. finally did marry the man, she found she 
could not get along with him. She would live with him for 
a few months only to return to her parents again. In a way 
she imitated the conditions that existed in her own home. 
This is no accident. Adjustment always begins at home and 
the individual always adjusts himself in proportion to the 
degree of adjustment that existed in the home. Whenever 
there is quarreling and friction in the family, the child either 
develops a neurosis, or imitates the home condition later in 
his life. I can cite numerous cases showing how marked 
this imitation is. I have cases that go back to four genera- 
tions where the same imitation prevailed, — unhappy married 
life, separation, divorce. It is really an unconscious repro- 
duction from one generation to another that is not at all 
hereditary. Mrs. B. very definitely reproduced the situation 
that she saw in her own home, except that she identified 
herself with the father rather than with the mother. But 
she could not continue this very long, presently she broke 
down, she began to have hallucinations, some mild delusions 
and various other symptoms. 



224 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

When I began to treat the patient, there at once came up 
the problem of her husband. As I do not take any special 
attitude in such matrimonial difficulties, I left her to decide 
for herself. It was a difficult problem to solve: on the one 
hand, she did not wish to stay with her husband, on the other 
hand, it was hard for her to stay in her parents' home. Her 
mother would often ask, "What would you do if I were to 
die?" She was thus but indirectly referring to the fact that 
if she were to die the father would at once marry the 
stenographer, and the daughter would consequently have to 
leave the house. There was considerable truth in this, and 
the argument struck home, for Mrs. B. always wanted to 
have the management of the house herself and she feared the 
possibility of seeing it pass over entirely into the hands of 
her father's mistress. 

Analysis of the dream revealed that the man in the dream 
represented her father; the woman appeared to be an old 
lady, perhaps over a hundred years old, and resembling her 
grandmother. She informed me that her mother resembled 
her grandmother. Now the latter died at eighty-six and 
had she lived until the day of the dream she would have been 
one hundred and one. The slight difference between the 
woman in the dream and the mother recalled to her the 
features of the stenographer, her father's mistress. The 
combined ages of the stenographer who was thirty-one and 
the mother was exactly eighty-six years. In other words, 
there was a condensation of the two persons, the grandmother 
representing both the mother and the stenographer. 

In the dream, as we see, the father kills them both, and 
that is indeed the best solution for the patient. She does not 
sympathize with her mother and would often complain, 
"There is no use talking about her; she is crazy and does 
not understand me." As for the stenographer, she liked her 
and was grateful to her for what she did to help the father. 



TYPES OF DREAMS 225 

Her objections to her were simply due to a feeling of 
jealousy. One of the reasons for the friction between her 
and her husband was that he could not supply her with the 
little luxuries that she was able to receive from her father at 
home, whose favorite daughter she was. The only possible 
solution that she could see was to leave her husband alto- 
gether and stay at home. Her father offered to help her 
husband but the husband would not accept any aid, though 
he was willing, however, to live at home with her and thus 
save rent. But she protested that she married to get away 
from her home, and that she did not see any use for her 
husband if she were to remain at home. "Imagine," she 
declared, "sitting at dinner with a mother and a father who 
do not talk, the father thinking all the while of the mistress ; 
and you sit there, too, with your husband whom you do not 
like." On the other hand, the mother was always ready with 
that powerful argument: "If I should die, you know what 
would happen to you." We see then how convenient it was 
for the father to kill both women: the patient would then 
have the house for herself and her father and not be 
hampered by a crazy mother and a rival mistress. She did 
not, of course, formulate such a wish consciously, but you 
see how well it fits in with the situation. It is remarkable 
that there was this condensation, not only in appearance, but 
also in age. The age of the old lady just equals the com- 
bined ages of the two women. This may seem very peculiar 
to you but it is a common occurrence in dreams. 

It is interesting to note the other work of the psychic 
censor 1 in her dreaming the dream over again. This time 

1 The psychic censor, as the term is used in our work, is nothing 
but the inhibitions imposed upon the individual by society, and once 
established, operates all the time, whether we are awake or asleep. 
As we have pointed out previously, between consciousness and the 
unconscious there is a screen which we designate as the fore- 
conscious. In the unconscious, the psychic material is in the pure 
unalloyed form, infantile wishes are there, primitive urges. But 



226 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

she did not wish her father to see that she observed him 
murdering her mother. The day previous I explained to 
her the wish as the dream-motive and the modified dream, 
therefore, shows her agreement with what I told her, namely, 
that every dream represents the fulfillment of a hidden wish. 
For a dream repeating something heard shows that the 
dreamer is in harmony with the thought or sentiment ex- 
pressed. 

A common typical dream is the so-called examination 
dream. The dreamer usually seems to be taking an exami- 
nation and has the same emotional reaction to it that we 
observe in the waking state; he experiences the same sense 
of uneasiness and uncertainty that accompany the actual 
experience. The strange thing is that all during the dream 
he protests against the idea of being subjected to an examina- 
tion : "Why should I be examined in this subject," he seems 
to be saying to himself. "Am I not already a doctor?" 
But the examination nevertheless continues. Another inter- 
esting thing to note is that one is examined not in a subject 
in which one was poor or failed, as might be supposed, but 
rather in a subject in which one was considerably proficient. 
Analysis shows that these dreams are typical of individuals 
who have received the usual academic education at schools 
and colleges. Upon examining them you find that you have 
them only at a time when you are about to embark upon 
some new venture and you experience a feeling of uncer- 
tainty and fear as to its outcome. You go to bed with that 
same uneasy feeling that you had on the day before the 
examination. "Yes," you may think to yourself, "I know 
my subject but I may be asked something that I do not 

before it can reach consciousness it has to pass through the fpre- 
conscious where it is censored. Upon reaching consciousness, it is 
thus in a modified and distorted form. In the above dream the 
distortion was inevitable: the dreamer could not openly kill the 
mother, and so she concealed her under the composite person of 
the grandmother and the stenographer. 



TYPES OF DREAMS 227 

know." And so when you retire with your mind uneasy 
as to the outcome of your undertaking, by association you 
recall that same emotional feeling experienced in the past 
on the similar occasion, and the result is an examination 
dream in a subject which you have passed with honors, so 
that you might be able to console yourself thus : "Now you 
were afraid before your examination but you passed it 
without difficulty: in the same way also you will pass this 
examination. Do not worry, do not fear." We must re- 
member that what is of fundamental consideration is the 
emotional element in the dream. If there is any resem- 
blance between the emotional element of to-day and any 
emotional element of the past, the dream will conjure up 
the past in all its vividness. In the particular case it is a 
consolation dream: all uncertainty is to be removed: you 
are to be consoled. But the psychic censor, which always 
realizes that you are only dreaming, cannot possibly eliminate 
the element of fear and uncertainty that you experienced on 
the occasion of the actual examination. When the dreamer 
awakens he feels greatly relieved that it was only a dream. 
Some of you may recall in this connection the case of the 
man who dreamed that he was swimming on a board in the 
bay. We may say that this was a sort of examination 
dream. In the dream, as you remember, a boyhood expe- 
rience was revived; we may say that he again engaged in a 
race, this time, however, not with his young playmates but 
with a board of directors, and as in those boyhood matches 
he finds himself again successful. 

There is a class of dreams which continue to manifest 
themselves for weeks and months until the wish they contain 
is actually realized. They are what are commonly regarded 
as "prophetic dreams." A chronic alcoholic showing delu- 
sions of jealousy disliked a dog because his wife "was more 
attached to the dog than to him." He continued to dream 



228 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

at different times that the dog was run over, taken away by 
the dog catcher, etc., until one day during his wife's absence 
he really disposed of it. Here the dream ostensibly treated 
of the future, at least so the wife thought on her return 
home. "Poor Fido," she exclaimed, "John (husband) 
dreamed only last week that he was caught by the dog 
catchers and now the dream has come true." This is what 
is designated as the resolution dream. The person resolves, 
perhaps unconsciously, to do a certain thing and the dream 
continues to represent it as realized until it is actually ac- 
complished. That is why dreams of this class are regarded 
as prophetic dreams, "dreams that come true." I have 
analyzed a number of them and all showed that the wish 
always preceded the event in question. Thus one of my 
patients dreamed that her brother who lived in another city 
was dead, and after relating her dream to her husband re- 
ceived word that her brother had really died. The analysis 
showed that her brother suffered from chronic tuberculosis 
which the doctors declared fatal months before. She was 
fully aware of the gravity of his malady and often thought 
he would be better off dead than alive. Her mother lived 
with her, but owing to her brother's illness, she stayed with 
him. She was nearing the end of a pregnancy and daily 
hoped that her mother would return before her confinement. 
This recalled similar experiences of childhood when her 
mother often neglected her for the same brother because 
he was very delicate and sickly. As a child she often wished 
him dead, a thing quite common among children to whom 
the idea of death means simply to be away. The conscious 
wish "he would be better off dead than alive" became the 
dream incitor because it succeeded in arousing a similar in- 
fantile wish. 

The realization of our waking dreams shows precisely the 
same mechanisms. This can be observed not only in the 



TYPES OF DREAMS 229 

individual but in whole races. We all know that the 
"Leitmotif" of orthodox Judaism is and always has been the 
reestablishment of a Jewish nationality, the return to Jeru- 
salem; and should Zionism ever succeed in obtaining Pales- 
tine, the Biblical dreams, the prophecies, would be considered 
as having "come true." 

Another typical dream is that of missing trains. I would 
not consider this a typical dream if it did not usually have 
one very important and distinct connotation, despite its 
many other meanings depending upon the individual case. 
We observe in this dream a state of anxiety; the individual 
experiences all the unpleasantness of packing hurriedly to 
make the train, he meets with all sorts of difficulties and 
hindrances on the way, and to cap the climax, he finally 
misses the train. We have here again a consolation dream; 
we are told, as it were, not to worry, as there will be no 
departure. This type of dream is usually a reaction to the 
fear of death, and recalls to the dreamer some scene in early 
childhood when his parents were taken from him, sometimes 
through actual death, sometimes for just some trip, leaving 
him heartbroken and crying. 

We must also not fail to note the important part the train 
plays in the child's life. Typifying, as it does, motion to the 
highest degree, the moving train has a powerful hold on his 
imagination, exercising a fascination over him no less pro- 
found than his first sense of awe and terror at the sight. 

One of the most typical dreams is the Hying dream. A 
man related to me the following dream of this type : He was 
walking, and all of a sudden he felt lighter and lighter and 
suddenly he began to glide over the tops of houses and the 
whole city was looking up to him as to an aeroplane. Such 
dreams are usually found among people who have unbounded 
ambitions, who wish to excel and stand high in the estimation 
of the world. Very often it is found also among those who 



230 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

are not tall of stature, who by no means relish the idea of 
having to look up to people when speaking to them. They 
would rather look down upon others and the only way they 
can realize such a wish is in soaring far above them or, in 
other words, in flying. One man who came under my ob- 
servation had this type of dream quite often; and it is note- 
worthy that his most ardent wish was to be taller than he 
was. He often resorted to mechanical appliances and similar 
methods to pull his limbs. 

It is hard to imagine what an important role in life the 
wish to be taller plays. I have known a number of people 
who informed me with all the emotion that usually goes with 
the disclosure of some very intimate, personal secret, how 
hard they always tried to be just a little taller. It is hard to 
realize how much time, money and effort men and women 
spend in their sanctum sanctorum, in the pursuit of divers 
means and ways to become taller. 

An unusually interesting typical dream is the falling 
dream. It is significant to note that at certain times in life 
one has more dreams of this type than at other times. 
Various investigators in attempting to account for the dream 
psychologically, have offered all kinds of far-fetched and 
amusing explanations. One of the most common of these 
is that, in accordance with the culture-epoch theory, the 
dream goes back to prehistoric times, and in this particular 
case, to the period when we were monkeys and lived on the 
tops of trees. We are told that when the monkey fell down 
peradventure from the tree at night, he was immediately 
devoured by some vicious reptile, and that it is for that 
reason that we never strike the ground in the dream. Such 
a notion is difficult to conceive in the light of the most 
modern investigations along these lines ; surely it is hard to 
conceive of a monkey falling down from a tree and being 
at once swallowed by some cowering reptile. Moreover, I 



TYPES OF DREAMS 231 

have known dreams where the dreamer falls and actually 
strikes the ground. What the falling dream essentially de- 
notes, however, is a repressed pleasure originating from 
motion, which, as we know, is a fundamental pleasure prin- 
ciple in life. Motion is a passive root of sex and as such has 
a powerful appeal to young and old alike. Thus from time 
out of date, among uncivilized and civilized peoples alike, 
the way to pacify the child that was unsatisfied with nursing, 
was to rock it. We know that as the child grows older it 
likes to be taken up by an adult, thrown up in the air and 
caught: it experiences a sense of exhilaration and pleasure 
in the experience. Later on this early emotion repeats itself 
in dreams, but then we now no longer conceive it in terms 
of pleasure, but, rather in terms of pain. It is now a re- 
pressed, a tabooed pleasure. That is why so many men and 
women have these falling dreams as symbolic of moral 
falling. I have on record many dreams of falling given to 
me by women when they were struggling with the idea of 
moral falling. I reported a dream of a woman who informed 
me that she dreamed that she was climbing a staircase and 
found it very difficult ; she was always afraid that she would 
fall down. Right on top of the staircase there stood an old 
classmate of hers of whom she knew nothing, not having 
seen her since they left school ; she had heard, however, that 
she was a most unscrupulous, immoral woman now. Thus 
her dream was the result of her struggling with the repressed 
thought ; she was trying to reach the station of her classmate. 
The dream being of the anxiety type she woke up in a 
marked state of fear. The moral here is very evident: "If 
you are going to do what you are thinking of you will be 
just like your classmate"; the classmate standing here as a 
symbol for moral falling. 

There are dreams which you might say are of a local 
character. This is particularly observed when we examine 



232 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

the dreams of southern gentlemen. The latter invariably 
have sexual dreams referring to colored women. This would 
seem strange in view of the degree of aloofness with which 
the colored people in the South are treated by the white 
population. But I have never known a southern gentleman 
who did not at some time in life have erotic dreams about 
colored women. The reason is quite apparent: all of these 
men had negro mammies and it is to them that they owe 
their first early impression of the mother. It is well known 
that many southern ladies have practically nothing to do with 
the care of their children, that it is left entirely to the 
mammy. It is on that account that the mammy is so very 
often highly esteemed and even considered as a member of 
the family. But the fact is that she is colored and her im- 
press on the child manifests itself consequently in his later 
erotic dreams. Whereas, then, the southern gentleman will 
not deign to be in the same car with a colored woman, he 
has nevertheless shown no scruples in cohabiting with her in 
his younger days. This is unheard of in any other place 
outside of the South, and it may interest you to know that 
in investigating the sexual life of probably a few thousand 
people I have never found a white man with the exception 
of the southern gentleman who by preference would have 
sexual relations with a colored woman. But in the South 
this is quite common even among the respectable men. Thus 
one often learns that many so-called gentlemen maintained 
colored mistresses and some of them even acknowledged their 
mixed offsprings. 

Before leaving the subject of typical dreams I wish to 
touch briefly upon another class of dreams which we may 
consider more or less typical, — in which the dreamer identi- 
fies himself with some animal. The dreamer is here hidden 
under the animal, strange as that may seem. To give you a 
little more insight into the nature of this identification, I 



TYPES OF DREAMS 233 

wish to read to you first, the dream of a woman who identi- 
fied herself with a dog, and secondly, a significant part of a 
very long dream of a patient who identified herself with a 
horse. The first dream runs as follows: 

"Brownie is sick and we give him medicine or we think 
he has lived long enough, so we give him poison. Then we 
regret it and I ring up the veterinary. I wonder whether the 
poison is fatal, and as I think about it I realise that it is. 
'It is hemlock,' I say to myself, 'and that is what they gave 
Socrates.' I am very much worried and I am relieved when 
the veterinary arrives and prescribes an emetic of mustard 
and hot water. My mother is there and she irritates me 
because, instead of helping, she only wrings her hands and 
cries." 

The dreamer has had the dog for four years and is deeply 
attached to him. She is always with him, and never leaves 
him out of her sight. The dog is a quiet, sober animal and 
I frequently used to remark to her that "Brownie" appears 
very philosophical. Of late the patient continued to fear 
that he might die, and this, despite the fact that she con- 
sulted a veterinary who assured her that the dog had still 
four or five more years to live. In the course of the analysis 
the dreamer recalled a play in which a girl attempts suicide : 
as soon as she has taken the poison she begins to cry for help, 
some one appears on the scene and administers hot water 
and mustard as an antidote. I would have you mark that 
these are the very medications that the physician prescribed 
for the dog. She also recalls that on the day previous to the 
dream she asked a girl at the canteen for something to eat 
and was told that she could only have a "dog with mustard." 
The analysis also revealed that she had been very depressed 
of late and had thought seriously of suicide. In time she 
began to be concerned over the dog, perhaps he might die, 
she thought, — she thus began to detach some of her own 



234 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

anxiety from her own person to the animal. But she is like 
the woman in the play who took the poison and straightway 
called for help: she really does not wish to die. There are 
so many people who merely like to play with the idea of 
suicide, because it offers them some form of emotional 
outlet. In the dream the patient is relieved because the 
veterinary gives the dog mustard and hot water, thus saving 
his life. The dream thus realizes her wish to live. That 
part of the dream which speaks about her being irritated by 
her mother refers to the friction existing between the patient 
and her mother. Whenever the mother annoyed her she 
would play sick. The parent in her great excitement would 
then send for the doctor who would prescribe bromide. In 
the dream we see the patient picturing herself dead only to 
revenge herself on her mother. And the interesting thing to 
observe is that this is all accomplished in the dream indirectly 
through the person of the dog Brownie. 1 

This identification with animals is often real and profound, 
as the analysis of the following dream very definitely shows. 
The dreamer is a noted animal painter, a woman who has 
always loved animals. One of her greatest pleasures in life 
is to frolic about in her studio, walking on all fours in imi- 
tation of a pony. Her dream runs as follows : 

"I am -walking in a sort of side path from S. . . . Station 
on my way home. My skirt is up and I pass a hard stool 
tike a horse. I look around and see a woman walking some 
little distance behind, there is perhaps a strip of something 
across her face, a veil covering one eye. I hope she doesn't 
see me and ridicule me. Again I pass a hard stool and turn 
around and hope the woman hasn't seen me. I am walking 
with some one, probably my father. I get into the road to 
drive a horse, possibly an ass. Mr. L. gives me the reins, 

*Cf. dream about the two cats fighting, another example of 
attimal identification. 



TYPES OF DREAMS 235 

which are not at all reins, but a single strap attachment 
without bridle or a bit. I am driving: I seem to have 
stopped in the road zvith the horse, and the cart turned the 
other direction. I am adjusting the harness at the collar 
or something; there is a loose, sorrel mare which comes up; 
she is very beautiful, with a delicate head and nose, and 
slender limbs. She stands right up against my horse, cheek 
to cheek, as though to make friends with him or me. I slap 
her on the side of the nose but she insists upon standing 
there. I slap her again, and as I put my hand up toward 
her again she bites or attempts to bite. As I resist, I say, 
'She bites/ She seems to have gone down under a bridge 
or subway. I want Mr. L. to keep her there while I get 
away with my horse over the bridge. There seems to be 
some difficulty. At last I go down to see how he is manag- 
ing her, or to assist. She is now a young woman, pale and 
thin, and not in her right mind. Mr. L. is holding her by 
a string in her nose: — a piece of wire. I am afraid it will 
tear and I say so. She comes toward me with her face 
near mine and I am greatly frightened; she has a hairy lip 
and is much older. I awake in fright." 

Mrs. K., the dreamer, is a married woman of twenty-six, 
who consulted me originally because she was nervous. As 
far as the outer world was concerned she seemed perfectly 
normal, her intimate friends never knew that there was 
anything troubling her. The outstanding factor in her 
psychic life is a condition that she had revealed to no one, — 
the fact that she hated to be a woman and always desired to 
be a man. This "masculine protest" as the feeling is desig- 
nated is not as uncommon a mechanism as it may seem. 
The dream is most significant, for it actually reveals the very 
mainsprings of her whole psychic development and thus 
offers a remarkable analysis of her whole neurosis. 

"Going from S. . . . Station" refers to the place where 



236 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

she used to live when a little girl. "Walking with her skirt 
up," — to this it was most difficult for her to associate, because 
she is a very clean-minded woman. But it goes back to her 
unusual attachment to horses. At a very early age she 
evinced a tremendous interest in them, at the age of four or 
five years she always craved to be a horse, and identified first, 
her father and then herself with the horse. We can now 
begin to see the reason for the strange situation, — "My skirt 
is up and I pass a hard stool like a horse," — it is plainly the 
result of her identification with a horse, it is an expression of 
her wish to be a horse. We may already see how profound 
and deep rooted is her identification. It is highly significant 
also that one of her symptoms is marked constipation from 
which she suffered for years. I am glad to say that since 
the analysis of this dream, the symptom has entirely disap- 
peared. 

The woman "walking some little distance behind" is her 
stepmother whom she describes as having been just, though 
critical toward her. In the dream the patient sees a "strip 
across her face, a veil covering one eye." This is a picture 
of Justice and she recalls a cartoon of Justice that she saw in 
one of the local newspapers. The woman became her step- 
mother when Mrs. K. was five years old and though she 
really treated her as a daughter, she has always remained the 
one person of whom the patient was extremely jealous: Mrs. 
K. could never forgive her father for marrying her. 

Mr. L. is her brother who represents her ideal type of 
man, the type of man whom she would have liked to marry. 
The horse is really herself. "And possibly an ass," — to this 
she associated her stepmother, thus identifying herself with 
the stepmother in order to be with her father. We see that 
she is desirous of taking the stepmother's place. 

The analysis revealed also that every time the patient meets 
a man she experiences a morbid dread that he might "bridle 



TYPES OF DREAMS 237 

her and put a bit in her mouth ;" it is for that reason that 
she craves to be a man, and protests against being a woman. 
This is the crux of her emotional difficulties. We know that 
at a certain period of her development almost every girl 
would like to be a boy. But when the girl reaches a certain 
age she begins to realize that she cannot do the things that 
boys do, she gradually adjusts herself to a girl's normal in- 
terests and occupations. This is as it should be. As women 
are biologically different from men, they must be brought 
up as women, and not as men ; we should give them an edu- 
cation that fits them for womanhood. That is why it is so 
absolutely necessary to guard most carefully against bringing 
up a girl to be a tomboy. We must remember also to begin 
training the child to react normally very early, for it will be 
most difficult for him to give up an abnormal mode of re- 
action later in life, after it has become a second habit, so to 
speak. 

The dreamer, then, always craved to be a man, though she 
was not at all homosexual; her cravings were perfectly 
normal. She married a man who loved her deeply, out of 
sheer pity for him, as she maintains. She does not treat 
him at all as a husband, for it is she herself that desires to be 
the man; she would be extremely jealous, for example, if he 
could shoot better than she. Out in the country she once 
observed him to do a high jump and when she found that 
she could not do it, she actually practised for days, until she 
learned it. 

From very early childhood, the dreamer always identified 
herself with her father. She still imitates him practically in 
everything. The man was exceedingly fond of horses, and 
her own love of horses goes back to this source. When she 
was a little girl he always played horse with her, the practise 
continuing to as late as nine and ten. It was the little girl's 
greatest delight. She learned to neigh and romp like a horse. 



238 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

The father, needless to say, fell right in the spirit of the 
game, encouraging the little girl, and offering her, as he 
thought, a source of great pleasure. 

The mare coming up to her, "with a delicate head and nose 
and slender limbs," represents her ideal horse. The dreamer 
has studied and painted horses for years and knows con- 
siderably about them, she may be justly considered a second 
Rosa Bonheur. "She stands right up against my horse, 
cheek to cheek, etc. — I slap her on the side of the nose. . . ." : 
this refers to a woman who is involved in an affair with a 
man whom she loves. And as we read on, we find that the 
mare actually turns out to be a woman. 

From the above brief analysis we may readily see that the 
dreamer retained what we may call her whole infantile 
sexuality. Her father was to no small degree responsible for 
this. As nice as it may be to play horse with one's child, 
it is not quite the thing to do at the age of nine, ten or 
eleven, at this time it is altogether too infantile a pastime for 
father and child to engage in. How much better it would 
have been had he taken her out for a walk and indulged in 
some pleasure appropriate for a child of that age. 

This identification with animals is not at all unusual. We 
have seen a notable example of it in the case of the young 
woman who accused herself of having drowned those pups. 
We saw how real and profound was the identification and the 
surprising extent to which it affected the young woman 
physically. We find this mechanism in a more glaring form 
among the insane. Long before I was a medical student, I 
remember observing at Blackwell's Island a patient who was 
known as "Johnny the Horse." He imagined that he was a 
horse, he always pulled a little cart after him, ran, galloped 
and behaved in every respect like a horse. I have heard that 
he continued in this condition until his death. Apropos of 
this you may recall the biblical story of Nebuchadnezzar, who 



TYPES OF DREAMS 239 

considered himself an animal when he became insane. Such 
cases are known to psychiatrists as lycanthropia or delusions 
of transformation. Such patients very often imagine them- 
selves to be animals and imitate them in every possible way. 

We observe a similar condition also in normal life. A 
great many people show a marked attachment to animals, and 
sometimes even take them as substitutes for children, when 
the latter are denied them. There is no objection to animals 
as pets provided the environment is suitable and the animals 
are well cared for. They offer a good outlet to grown ups 
and children. I recommend pets especially in the case of 
only children. I prefer dogs and birds, animals that can 
enter into rapport with the human being. I am against such 
pets as white rats or snakes, because instead of helping the 
individual to learn to give and take emotions more freely, 
they actually tend to isolate him ; people as a rule either avoid 
a person who keeps such animals, or else regard him as a 
freak. 

Pets have their purpose as an emotional outlet, and as such 
fall into the same category with collections ; both offer modes 
of emotional expression. They are valuable, particularly in 
the case of an individual who lacks the opportunity to direct 
his affection normally toward children, family or friend. 

It is a fundamental truth that the human being must have 
somebody, or something to love all the time: if he cannot 
direct his libido toward some human being, he directs it 
toward some animal or inanimate object, or sublimates it in 
some activity. It is well known that we become attached not 
only to a certain locality but to a certain home, a certain 
room, a certain bed, etc. I have actually had to treat a man 
because his chair in which he sat for thirty years was de- 
stroyed. The history of suicides shows very definitely that 
the individual was led to self-destruction because he had 
nobody and nothing to love. While there is love, there is 



240 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

life, to paraphrase an old hackneyed saying. I know that 
some people will never commit suicide no matter in what 
distressing and harrowing circumstances they may find them- 
selves, for an intimate study of their lives shows that they 
have some person or object to whom they are deeply attached. 
That is why we so often hear the well-known formula: 
"If not for my children, — if not for my love of art, — etc., 
etc., I would have been dead long ago." I have known a man 
who informed me that the only thing that keeps him from 
taking his life is his love for his pigeons. I am convinced 
that were it not for that, he would commit suicide. That is 
why abnormally attached lovers sometimes commit suicide 
when they are torn away from each other* When they are 
deprived of the love object they experience a terrible feeling 
of voidness, they feel that there is nothing left for them in the 
world, for the moment they cannot take their detached libido 
and fix it upon some other object, and they commit suicide. 
When I was abroad in 1905, I read about a couple in Paris 
who committed suicide because their cat was killed. While 
they were out driving, the animal jumped off the carriage and 
was killed. There is no doubt that they identified the cat 
with a child, and now that it was gone out of their life they 
felt that they had nothing more to live for. 

It is such intimate relationships formed in early childhood 
between human beings and animals that make for this identi- 
fication in both normal and abnormal mental life and lay the 
basis for the appearance of animals in dreams. 

We have noted thus far some of the general principles of 
dream analysis and now I propose to be more concrete and 
give you some conception of the dream as it appears in its 
manifold associations and details. I hope to show you in 
this way how every detail in the dream is manifoldly deter- 
mined, or over determined. I have chosen two dreams for 



TYPES OF DREAMS 241 

that purpose. The first of these reads as follows : "It was 
Easter Sunday and I had been commissioned to bring some 
buns to my aunts. On my way to their home I 
saw my uncle on the other side of the street; he Manifoldly 

,. , L ., ,. , . j Determined 

zcas going %n the opposite direction and car- 
ried under his arm a dog which I recognized as belong- 
ing to my aunts. A little further on I met Miss G., 
a social worker; she referred to Mr. X., to the effect that he 
was worth his w 'eight in gold or some baser metal. When I 
reached the house of my aunts I found the dog there; ap- 
parently he had come back. My aunt complained that since 
uncle was so fond of the dog, she had consented to his taking 
him along, knowing that the animal would find his way back. 
The dog began to play with me. I put my hand in his mouth 
and said, 'Rover, don't hurt me!' My brother George was 
there and as he watched me playing with the dog, remarked: 
'Make believe my little fellow wouldn't like a dog like that 
to play with! At that, some one, I think it was the dog him- 
self, spoke: 'Why there is a puppy here, Rover's puppy; 
Rover hasn't enough milk for it. The poor little thing needs 
human milk!' I wondered how Rover came to have a puppy, 
and my aunts explained that Rover had met another dog 
Coucho in the woods." 

When the person is asked what caused him to have such a 
dream, he usually betrays utter ignorance at first, but upon a 
little reflection, soon recalls some incident of the day previous 
to the dream. Very often he may even reproduce some 
situation that happened long before the dream, but it was 
invariably something of the day before the dream that starts 
the trend of the associations. Accordingly the particular 
dreamer in question recalled that she had read on the 
previous day some notice about a preacher who was going to 
speak at a certain church that she usually attends on Easter 
day. That very day she also thought of her mother's family ; 



242 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

on Easter day she usually visits her aunts, and that is why 
it happened to be Easter day in the dream, though in reality 
it was by no means near the spring holiday. When she 
visits her aunts, she usually takes along buns; it is a sort 
of family custom. The uncle is the man who died a few 
years ago and whom she often used to meet in her aunts' 
home. He was very fond of the aunts, of whom, by the 
way, there were three, and also of their dog. The man was 
considered a capitalist and the dreamer states that he was 
quite wealthy when he died. As far back as the dreamer 
could remember, the aunts always had black dogs. 

Miss G., the social worker whom she met, brought these 
associations: Yesterday the dreamer called on Mrs. B., the 
mother of her dead friend ; the latter wanted her to call with 
her on Mr. X. mentioned in the dream, but the dreamer re- 
fused to do so. Mr. X. once had a love affair with the 
dreamer and she hoped he would marry her ; but he married 
another woman, primarily for the latter's money. Very few 
people know about this old love affair and that is why she 
would not call on him with Mrs. B. 

Miss G. spoke about Mr. X. in the dream and declared that 
he was worth his weight in gold or some baser metal. This 
brought forth the following story: The dreamer read a 
story in the evening newspaper the night before the dream 
about a negro, Cato Alexander by name, who died in New 
York in 1832. The account stated that this negro was 
originally a slave who had somehow bought his freedom and 
came to New York where he opened a tavern. Being an ex- 
cellent cook, he became in time immensely rich. He had a 
daughter and to any white man who would marry her, he 
offered her weight in gold. According to the newspaper, 
his wish was never realized. Mr. X. has been very pros- 
perous since he married, and is now "immensely rich." You 
see in the dream she speaks about his "worth" in terms of 



TYPES OF DREAMS 243 

"gold" or some "baser" metal, the adjective "baser" having 
in this connection a distinct and peculiar significance, be- 
cause she hates him and always thinks of him as "that dog." 

As for the dogs, she remembers that in walking to the 
subway station from her home, she saw a lady exercising 
three dogs. That reminds her of her aunts who also had 
three dogs. This recalled a letter that she read in the New 
York Times in which the writer discussed the question 
whether animals are guided by reason or instinct and con- 
cluded that dogs show considerable reasoning power; he 
cited the example of a dog who though taken a long distance 
away from his home, nevertheless found his way back, the 
case thus demonstrating a very complex form of reasoning 
on the part of the animal. 

We have here already a great many associations which 
throw considerable light on the dream. In the first place, 
it is evident that Mr. X. is identified with the dog. The 
association about the negro who desired a white man to 
marry his daughter for her weight in gold is a bit of analogy 
to Mr. X. who married a woman for her money and whose 
whole aim in life was the acquisition of money. That is why 
he was referred to as being worth his weight in gold or some 
baser metal, and compared to a white man who would 
marry a negress for money. 

Her brother, George, in the dream, she saw in church last 
on Easter Sunday, and she had occasion to think deeply 
about him on the day before the dream. The last time she 
met him, he spoke about Mr. X. and made some unkind, 
caustic remark about him ; but she could only recall his saying 
that Mr. X. was "a sucker and a dog." Indeed, that was 
what the whole family thought of him. 

As for having the dog talk, — that is not at all impossible 
in the dream. You may recall, I am sure, the acrimonious 
buffet of words between the two cats, to which I drew your 



244 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

attention in another connection. In dreams, as in fables and 
mythology, inanimate and animate things know none of those 
limitations that they may possess in reality; note, for in- 
stance, that we have talking trees in Greek mythology. 

To the dog's saying, "the poor little thing needs human 
milk, etc." she gave the following association : She holds a 
position of considerable importance, and was recently pre- 
sented with a few liberty bonds for a charitable purpose by 
the manager; they were given to her with some ceremonial 
and in his speech he referred to the dreamer as being "full 
of the milk of human kindness." And that is exactly what 
Mr. X. needs; he is devoid of all these fine qualities, he is 
hard and mercenary, he needs a little of "the milk of human 
kindness." 

Please note that the words spoken by the dog were almost 
an exact reproduction of the words heard before the dream. 
A quotation in the dream is always based on something 
heard or read but it is usually modified by the dream to fit 
the situation in the dream. 

The dreamer now returns to her aunts who were four in 
number, three of whom are living. Their present dog is a 
male puppy and it is the third that they have owned. The 
former one, called Nellie, died of old age, and it was jocu- 
larly remarked in the family, that just like her mistress, she 
died a virgin; she was never allowed out of the house. 
Rover meeting Coucho in the woods recalled to her a story 
by John Burroughs that she had read in the newspaper; it 
dealt with the mating habits of bucks, how they try to get 
as many does as they possibly can, that they have a regular 
"harem." Now according to the dream the dog met in the 
woods another dog called Coucho; she knew of no such 
name, but she soon resolved it into couch and the French 
"coucher," to lie. 

The dream represents the fulfillment of a wish. Despite 



TYPES OF DREAMS 245 

the fact that at present the dreamer consciously has absolutely 
no regard for Mr. X. and would have nothing to do with him, 
she nevertheless was in love with him in the past and would 
have married him, had he so desired ; consciously, she enter- 
tains no such hope now, but we still see traces of this old 
attachment in the unconscious. He comes back, as we see in 
the dream, though he is treated rather roughly and unspar- 
ingly ; he lacks all the finer qualities ; he is base and despic- 
able, — a very dog, — a man who would marry even a negress 
for money. He is carried by the uncle, because the latter 
put him on his feet financially and helped him in every way 
to become successful ; he is carried in the opposite direction, 
or in other words, to her home. For indeed, the uncle hoped 
that by helping him, Mr. X. would marry his niece; he as- 
sisted him because he thought that Mr. X/s reluctance to 
marry her was largely, if not entirely, due to economic and 
financial drawbacks. 

How did this dream come about? Its main determinant 
was the visit the day before to Mrs. B. who, not knowing 
what had passed between Mr. X. and the dreamer, sug- 
gested innocently that they call on him and his wife. Mrs. 
B. even remarked, "It's too bad you didn't care to marry 
him." The dreamer said nothing in reply, but this un- 
doubtedly stimulated many emotionally accentuated ideas. 
We have this visit, then, which consciously was just a dis- 
agreeable episode ; unconsciously, in the dream, it revived the 
whole past by taking all the associations that were fresh in 
her mind, particularly the story about the negro and his 
daughter whose dowry was to be her weight in gold. "Mr. 
X. is worth his weight in gold, or some baser metal," we 
learn in the dream, an indirect comparison, of course, be- 
tween him and the man who was to marry the negro woman. 
The unconscious repressed wish still lingers there, and the 
uncle, who is now dead, and who in the past tried to have 



246 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

Mr. X. marry his niece by aiding him financially, is carrying 
him back to her home. Reading also on the same day about 
the mating instincts of bucks, she unconsciously thought of 
what Mr. X. had insinuated, when he broke to her the news 
of his engagement, namely, that that ought not make any 
difference in their relationships. You see here the indirect 
analogy to the idea of the "harem." Thus, then, quite un- 
consciously, because of these episodes that touched certain 
analogous situations which in reality were very imperfect 
comparisons, the dream was formed. We may readily see 
that when she went to sleep, she thought again of her con- 
versation with Mrs. B. and about the significant remarks that 
the latter had made. But she could not consciously dwell on 
the situation and pushed it out of consciousness. If she had 
allowed herself to think of it, and all the reminiscences of 
her sad experiences with Mr. X. she would not have fallen 
asleep; so she crowded out, as it were, all thought of him 
from her mind and all those episodes of the day, particu- 
larly those which showed an erotic accent, were immediately 
taken up and woven into the dream, for they fitted in with 
the present situation and could thus realize the wish. 

You can now the more readily see what we mean when we 
say that there are two streams to every dream. The first one 
is always in conflict with the second ; an individual may desire 
something, but as it is impossible to realize, either because 
it is not permitted or because it is unattainable, there imme- 
diately ensues a sort of conflict in which the mind takes it up 
and with a few modifications finally realizes it. The modi- 
fications are entirely determined by what we call the psychic 
censor which always stands between these two streams. In- 
stead of allowing the original wish to be realized in its pure 
form, the psychic censor modifies it so that you can realize 
it even in the unconscious without shocking your other self. 
You remember the dream about Venus and Apollo ; it would 



TYPES OF DREAMS 247 

have been impossible with the dreamer's psychic make-up; 
so that both characters had to be invested, as it were, with all 
sorts of disguises. Here, instead of consciously thinking 
of the mating instincts of bucks, and dwelling openly on the 
sex question and everything appertaining to it, there was a 
marked repression and you have only a mere allusion to the 
situation. We learn merely that the dog, Rover, went into 
the woods, where he met another dog by the peculiar name 
of "Coucho ;" we thus see in what an ingenious way the es- 
sential idea is concealed. 

We must bear in mind that in analyzing the dream it is 
necessary to ask the dreamer : "What do the elements in the 
dream recall? What associations do they arouse in your 
mind?" If the element is an apple, for instance, and the 
person in question draws it in the shape of a heart, and gives 
you half a dozen associations that very definitely refer to 
affairs of the heart and temptation, then the apple can stand 
for that group of ideas and that only; it can represent no 
other, for it arouses in the mind only those associations that 
refer to love and temptation. In each person, of course, 
certain elements recall certain associations and depending 
upon the nature of the individual's psychic life, you have 
this or that meaning. But when the associations continually 
revolve about an element in a certain definite way, then it 
can denote one thing and one thing only, it only points to 
some one definite and special fact. On the other hand, if the 
element apple ^should call forth in the same person's mind, 
associations referring not to love but to taste, such as "sour" 
and the like, then it would undoubtedly have an altogether 
different significance. In other words, we cannot categori- 
cally declare that an element denotes just one thing and no 
other; its significance is to be determined only in the light 
of the situation in which it is found, that is, it must be in- 
terpreted through its latent content. 



248 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

The second dream that I have chosen for our more or 
less detailed consideration, I analyzed with one of my pa- 
tients, a married woman, who, upon my request, has written 
it out with fine accuracy. It runs as follows: "A small 
tower or room at the corner of a house or barn in the 
country. A young woman, rather tall and slim, has been 
shut up in it. I am greatly distressed and immediately I 
(or my young woman companion or both) determine to, 
break in and save her. We do so out of a sense of profound 
sympathy for the suffering (asphyxiation and smothering) 
that she is probably undergoing and with a feeling of deadly 
shrinking and repulsion from the horror of the sight. I 
say, to comfort and give us confidence: 'She is dead, she 
took poison.' We found indeed that she is dead, most parts 
of the body being dried and brittle like a mummy, — the head 
and the mouth, — the latter shaped a little like a turtle, a little 
like a mitre, — the mouth through which she breathed her 
last agony and drank the poison. The hands are broken off 
at the wrist and hang down from the square stone post 
or elevated portion in the small room. They are still soft, 
the flesh on them white as of a fresh corpse. The rest of 
the body is dismembered and thrown over this raised portion 
of the room." 

The following are the associations that she gave me when 
she came to see me : "I awoke lying on my back with an un- 
comfortable feeling in my stomach, perhaps due to the very 
sandy soft clams I had eaten for supper. I had taken the 
day before a dose of cascara to get rid of a cold and catarrhal 
condition that was considerably aggravated by my trip to my 
brother in Chicago. I associate this with the poisoning in the 
dream. The asphyxiation may have been suggested by my 
being too warmly and heavily covered in bed or by my 
breathing somewhat under the bed clothes. (We thus see 
the determinant of the feeling of asphyxiation and smother- 



TYPES OF DREAMS 249 

ing). Then I heard Tommy (Joseph's young cat) mewing 
somewhere outside, as if in great distress. His mother who 
was sleeping on my bed ran out with her ears pricked to 
find out what was the matter. I slid into my overcoat and 
rubber boots, for it was raining heavily and went outside 
with the lantern. It was 3.30 a. m. Now the mother cat 
is wont to Jump over between two piazza roofs every night 
to come in through the upper windows, but Tommy, though 
he can climb the wisteria, has not ventured this jump as yet. 
So it occurred to me that he might have tried it and failed 
and that I should find him hanging by one claw, perhaps 
afraid to drop. But this was not the case. I located him 
presently on the garret roof and got him down with the step 
ladder. 

"This episode might have occasioned the dream; Tommy 
might have mewed and then stopped for a while before I 
awakened. The thought of going out to rescue a cat in 
distress that perhaps was entangled in wire, or perhaps was 
mad, was distinctly disagreeable." Here again as in the 
dream caused by the alarm clock to which I drew attention 
previously, we see that a stimulus, probably of very short 
duration, produced the whole dream. Added to this, there 
were the other significant factors: she was warmly covered 
and the room was stuffy; she is also suffering from some 
form of poisoning. The mewing of the cat, then, which 
undoubtedly brought up in the unconscious all the possi- 
bilities that might have really occurred, produced the dream 
of a mangled woman, smothered and poisoned. In accord- 
ance with our well known principle of dream analysis, she 
herself was the woman experiencing the terrible death. 
For no matter what the stimuli are, the dream is always ego- 
centric ; the individual himself is always taken as the psychic 
node in terms of which all the stimuli are elaborated. 

She continued her associations thus: "I am reminded of 



250 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

an incident a week or more ago when our neighbor who does 
chores for my aunt killed a large Rhode Island red cock 
for our Sunday dinner. It was left in the kitchen in a pail. 
I soon heard the colored girl calling my aunt, 'Miss Fanny, 
that rooster ain't dead!' My aunt who found the bird 
standing up and out of the pail went upstairs. I ran down- 
stairs, trembling, and wrathy at her for leaving it in that con- 
dition, got my hatchet and finished the job. The cock's 
head had been horribly mangled but he was far from dead." 
Here strictly were all the elements of the scene she saw in 
the dream. I am sure you must see by this time how in- 
significant the manifest content of the dream is in com- 
parison with the vast network of past associations, feelings 
and emotions that enter into the latent content. You may 
compare the manifest dream to a sunken steamer, you see 
only the very top of the mast, the great bulk of the vessel 
is submerged and it is only when you begin to pull at it that 
you find the whole mast. 

"The Italian boy, John, appeared at the moment when I 
severed the cock's head and observed: 'Miss Fannie, he's 
sufTerin'.' I told him we had a saying, 'To jump around like 
a hen with her head off !' But he maintained that when His 
father killed chickens, they were stark and did not move. 

"This reminded me of my drowning the young cats in 
Edgewater, just before I left there." I would like you to 
note the many intimate details that the average person would 
deem too trifling to relate. And what an unheroic figure 
the person often presents! There is something ludicrous 
about the whole situation : here is this young woman taking 
cascara to purge her stomach, chopping off a rooster's head 
and drowning kittens. What mighty deeds ! we smile to our- 
selves. 

To return to the associations. "These incidents always 
made me think of the war and how out of proportion one's 



TYPES OF DREAMS 251 

distress at pain seems to be when it is visible and when one 
is responsible for its relief. . . . Now I think of the de- 
scriptions of mangled soldiers in 'Under Fire/ of the wild 
girl of the trenches that was lost and accidentally found, 
— a putrid corpse ; now of Constance Beverly in Marmion — 
hence the mitre, because she was executed by the priests. 
The turtle mouth : because my father had a turtle for me in 
a wire cage in the brook when I was a child. During a 
freshet it became caught in the wire and was held there high 
and dry after the water went down. We did not visit it for 
a number of days and then my father released it." It is in- 
teresting to note the many and different elements that go to 
make up the picture of that woman in the dream. We say 
that each element is over determined, or manifoldly de- 
termined; there is no idea that is not determined by more 
than one association. 

But to continue: "I felt my father's pity for the poor 
animal and was depressed myself. . . . This makes me 
think how it occurred to me last night that my husband 
would not have wakened or taken trouble for the kitten, — 
in nine cases out of ten, — yet I remembered that in the tenth 
case he would have been a fine hand at rescue work. . . . 

"The girl is shut up as I felt my father confined me, — 
particularly mentally. . . . My female companion is my 
other self or the female in me, the compassionate, maternal 
part of me; there is also the ideal part of me that accom- 
plishes the heroic and overcomes horror and fear, the mascu- 
line in me that is victorious in the dream. My only comfort 
is that the girl is dead, and suffering and distress over. . . . 

"I am now thinking of the conversation I had with my 
brother's wife who recently went with him to the south. I 
asked her if our family there seemed to be expecting to go on 
'peopling the woods of Tennessee.' (I have had three 
nephews born within the last two or three years). She 



252 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

spoke as though my sister and sister-in-law were worrying 
because they feared their children were coming too close to- 
gether. I observed: 'Then they are following my step- 
mother in taking them as an unavoidable dispensation of 
providence. Such an attitude is indeed beyond my compre- 
hension/ " 

There now followed a discussion of birth control. . . . 
The dreamer spoke of the difficulties experienced by Mr. A., 
her married stepbrother, despite all the precautions that he 
had taken. ... "I recall his wife's labor and the child's 
death, — the miscarriage, — and how most women of her type 
feel about the whole affair. 

"And what would I do if I became pregnant again, if I 
were pregnant. . . ." Observe how personal the dream is, 
how it always returns to the dreamer's own problems, how 
the situation is always elaborated in terms of one's self, in 
terms of one's own inner problems and conflicts. "Is it 
worth while to run even the shadow of a risk when you do 
not want children? . . . Probably abstinence is best, but I 
for one become so torpid or so nervous when I practice it 
long. . . ." The meaning of the dream is now clear. It 
represents a hidden wish, to wit, not to be pregnant or in 
the event of pregnancy to have a miscarriage. 

From the analysis of the above dreams, we may see how 
the psychic material always revolves around the ego and is 
elaborated in terms of the individual's inner strivings and 
desires, and how every element in the dream is overdeter- 
mined or manifoldly determined^ 



CHAPTER X 
COMMON FORMS OF INSANITY 

Thus far I have attempted to show you the mechanisms as 
we find them first in the normal and then in the abnormal, 
or more definitely, in the neurosis. I endeavored to make 
clear how we apply the Freudian psychology to every-day 
faulty actions, to wit, to dreams, to neurotic symptoms and 
other abnormal conditions. Beginning with this hour I wish 
to give you a brief survey of the most common forms of 
insanity. 

The difference between a nervous disease and a mental 
disease is very marked ; there is as vast a difference between 
them as there is, we might say, between an Dementia 
ordinary cold and tuberculosis. An insanity, a **»«« 
psychosis, is a deep-reaching mental disturbance. Without 
any further attempt at definition, for the psychosis is very 
difficult to define, we may consider an individual insane 
whose actions, whose general behavior, are foreign to his en- 
vironments. The difference between a nervous condition 
and an insanity, then, should be sought in the degree and 
character of reaction toward the environment. 

When we study one of the most common forms of in- 
sanity, dementia prsecox, we find that it represents very 
definite characteristics. It was originally called by that 
name because it was supposed to be a dementia present in 
young people. As a matter of fact, it is neither a dementia 
nor is it confined always to young people, although probably 
75 to 80 per cent, of the cases are between sixteen and thirty. 

253 



254 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

It was also designated by some authors as a mental disease 
of puberty, for it manifests itself in a great many cases at 
about that age. We may define the disease as a progressive, 
mental disturbance, its main characteristic being an emo- 
tional deterioration. 

The outstanding characteristic of the praecox is his com- 
plete indifference to the outside world. Take, for instance, 
a concrete case, — that of a high school girl of about fifteen 
years of age. According to the history given to me by the 
mother she was perfectly well up to about five months ago, 
when she became "nervous :" she now sits around in the house 
insouciant and listless, does not care to dress, takes no in- 
terest in school or studies. When we investigate the case 
more closely we find that there were slight manifestations of 
the disease long before then, but that it was only since five 
months ago that the parents began to realize that the girl 
was not just lazy but actually sick. The average person does 
not realize usually the gravity of the condition until a report 
comes from school that Miss so-and-so absolutely neglects 
her work and is uninterested and indifferent. But it is a 
sure sign that there is danger ahead when a girl who has 
been apparently well suddenly becomes indifferent to the 
things that interest the average young woman of her age. 
The average girl likes to dress well, is very anxious to appear 
well in the eyes of others, feels badly when she does not get 
along in her studies. But the praecoxes do not care about 
these things. 

When the praecox develops into the full condition he 
presents a rather typical picture. The main characteristic 
is, as I said, an emotional deterioration; there is absolutely 
no emotional reaction. One of the diagnostic points that I 
would point out to students in the hospital in the examina- 
tion of such patients was to take a praecox and bid him put 
out his tongue, when I would get a long pin and say to the 



COMMON FORMS OF INSANITY 255 

students: "Now I am going to stick this through the pa- 
tient's tongue." And I would pretend to do so. Ordinarily, 
even if the patient thinks that I am only joking, he with- 
draws his tongue, but the praecox sits quite unconcerned, 
with his tongue, out. Indeed he would not object even if I 
were actually to try to stick the pin through his tongue. 
And similarly, light a match and thrust it before his eyes, 
and he will sit quiet and undisturbed, whereas any other 
person would close his eyes at once. You can singe a 
praecox's eyebrows and he would not close his eyes. One 
author declares that you can shoot a cannon near him and 
he would not move. He is absolutely indifferent to the out- 
side world. 

Originally a great many physicians who were not ac- 
quainted with the deeper aspects of dementia prsecox con- 
sidered it a masturbatic insanity, and as a matter of fact, 
there are doctors to-day who still consider it as such. I 
may have told you previously, masturbation does no mental or 
physical harm. It is a very common practice and most of 
the authorities who have investigated the subject claim that 
it is found in 100 per cent, of people. In the case of the 
average normal boy or girl the act is performed usually under 
cover, in some hiding place. But when the young person be- 
comes indifferent and begins to develop dementia prsecox, he 
will have no scruples in masturbating anywheres, with the 
result that the parents often catch him in the act. They 
consider it a vicious habit and try to get the child to break it. 
Then probably three or four months or a year later when 
they are actually convinced that the person is insane they 
inform the doctor that they know only too well the cause of 
his condition: "he has abused himself." But this is far 
from the truth. All the cases that I have observed that were 
presumably due to masturbation were only cases of dementia 
praecox. From the very outset, there was a marked emo- 



256 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

tional indifference, the feelings were dulled, and the patient 
would masturbate quite openly whenever the impulse moved 
him. It is because of this accidental relation between 
masturbation and dementia prascox that some old psychia- 
trists have described the disease as a form of masturbational 
insanity. There is no such disease. 

Another characteristic of the praecox is that he pays no 
attention to any one; he absolutely refuses to do what you 
tell him, and if he does carry out what he was bidden to, he 
does so in a mechanical way. His handshake is another 
diagnostic point in these cases. The average person who 
takes and gives emotions freely gives you a healthy hand- 
shake, you feel that he is transmitting his feelings. If a 
dementia praecox is finally moved to give his hand, he does so 
mechanically, he extends it stiffly, barely touching the prof- 
fered hand. 

In the advanced stage of the disease such patients sit in 
one place for weeks and months. I have observed some of 
them for as many as four or five years, every day they 
would resume their usual position and remain there, going 
through the same mannerisms. I have seen a man incessant- 
ly rub the top of his head, as he walked the floor, until he de- 
veloped a very prominent tonsure there. Others will go 
about and use what we call "verbigerations," stereotyped ex- 
pressions. They may start with a phrase such as "I don't 
want to do it," and continue to repeat it without end. When 
they do this every day for a year there are gradual elisions 
and only the person who had heard them first begin it can 
know what they are talking about. The same psychic proc- 
ess is seen not only in speech manifestations, but in various 
movements and actions, such as peculiarities in gait, writing, 
etc. Then, too, some of them show what we already re- 
ferred to in another connection as "catatonic" character- 
istics, they assume rigid attitudes. I have seen a patient of 



COMMON FORMS OF INSANITY 257 

this type imitate the cross, standing in the same position and 
staring at the sun for hours and hours until he was forced 
in for fear of sun-stroke. In a similar manner they react 
toward food and other necessities of life. They gobble 
their food down as though they were starved to death ; very 
often they take such big chunks that they choke to death. 
I have been called in a number of times to save such a patient 
from suffocation, but sometimes the physician arrives too 
late to save him. That is why in every dining-room in the 
insane asylum there are instruments always ready for just 
such an emergency. 

The patients also have certain hallucinations and delusions 
by which they are constantly controlled. When we delve 
into their lives we find that these delusions and hallucinations 
are by no means as senseless and meaningless as the average 
person would suppose, that there is a cause for them. We 
find that the patient is living in a world of his own, experi- 
encing over and over again some episode, living through 
some wish in a delusionary way. To get him out of himself 
for a little while, to gain entry into his little isolated world 
requires untold strength and endless patience. 

When I was in the hospital for the insane at Zurich I 
observed the case of an American girl, born in Kentucky, 
who had been an inmate in the asylum for years. She had 
to be kept in bed because she would not keep herself clean. 
She would sit there in bed the live-long day with her head 
buried between her knees, her eyes closed, in a peculiarly 
rigid attitude. She had never talked since she came to the 
hospital. Occasionally she would say something quite un- 
expectedly but no one could find out what she was talking 
about. Professor Bleuler informed me of a patient whom 
he had had of that type, a catatonic dementia prsecox. He 
decided once to see to what extent he could influence her to 
dress and get out of bed without resorting to force; he 



258 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

wished to see to what extent suggestion could be utilized 
on her. To the average sane person suggestions can be 
readily made, but these patients are shut-in and practically 
inaccessible. Professor Bleuler told me that he talked to the 
patient for hours at end before she dressed and went where 
he desired. I decided to perform the same experiment upon 
this woman. I went into the ward one afternoon and talked 
until I was proverbially blue in the face. She finally looked 
up and I felt highly rewarded considering that she had not 
done that for years. I said to her: "Aren't you ashamed 
of yourself lying around like that? Dress and I'll take you 
for a walk." I had her dressed, brought to my office, and 
for two full days she behaved like any normal person. She 
revealed to me her whole story. I found that she was ex- 
periencing symbolically an episode that occurred at her home 
in Kentucky. From what I gathered, it would seem that she 
was reproducing a seduction. She imagined that the young 
man was there with her in the hospital, talking to her all the 
time, while she just listened. She talked nicely to me and 
behaved in a perfectly normal way. But I had enough ex- 
perience by that time to know that it was too good to last. 
On the third day, as I was anxiously waiting for her to be 
brought in, I received a telephone to the efTect that my pa- 
tient had relapsed into her old condition, that she was faring 
Just as badly as ever. I dare say if I had sufficient physical 
endurance to perform the experiment again, I might have 
aroused her again for a while. 

Any marked emotional affect always tends to arouse such 
patients from their congealed state, to make them forget, as 
it were. We see this when they are operated. I observed 
a patient of this type in the Central Islip State Hospital who 
did not talk for almost five or six years. For two and a 
half years I had to feed him by means of a tube through the 
nostril, for he refused to eat. He looked cadaverous and 



COMMON FORMS OF INSANITY 259 

yellow, veritably like wax. One day we examined him and 
found that he was suffering from an internal inflammatory 
condition ; we felt that it was advisable to operate. I ad- 
ministered the anaesthetic, and it was passing strange to hear 
him plead with me not to operate. To say the least I was quite 
pleased to hear his voice. When he came to himself from 
the ether, he behaved like any sane person in a general 
hospital, he asked me how he was, what his temperature was, 
etc. I remember going into the dining room and imparting 
the interesting news to some of my colleagues. "So and so 
is normal now." They looked at me in blank wonder. "He 
is normal like any one else," I repeated. They talked to 
him and normal indeed he was. "Look here, why did you 
act like a crazy fellow and give me all that trouble of feeding 
you — it is a disagreeable business," I said to him. He did 
not answer ; he smiled. For three weeks he was in bed, re- 
covering from the operation. I informed him that I would 
soon send him home, and he was pleased. But one morning 
I came and, to my profound disappointment found him there 
in the same old place, in the same posture, with his head 
down, — the same old inaccessible praecox. It was as though 
the few weeks were completely wiped out of his life. I 
have seen a number of such cases in which an affect made 
the patient react. In this particular case, the fear of death 
and the will to live made him forget his abnormal world. 
The moment, however, he felt well again, he withdrew into 
his old little world and would not come out. 

Patients of this character are absolutely shut-in and their 
history reveals that they are always more or less so, they 
never mixed well with their fellows, they never showed any 
deep emotional rapport. There are many cases of the same 
type, though of course by no means as pronounced, who 
show bizarre expressions, who act peculiarly. No one can 
understand them, they are generally considered crazy. They 



260 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

are of the dementia praecox type, but not fully developed. 
They may have an episode which clears up to a certain ex- 
tent; its remnants remain, however, and continue to mani- 
fest themselves in the person's behavior. I know the case of 
a man, for instance, who as a boy was extremely precocious. 
He was far ahead of his class, he performed many an un- 
usual feat. But the teachers were often surprised when of 
a sudden he would get up in the class and say something that 
no one understood. At the age of thirteen he left home and 
joined a troop of actors in England. Great things were pre- 
dicted for him on the stage, but after a while, he ran off, 
tramped about for some time and then came to the United 
States where he worked at all sorts of jobs. Suddenly, he 
disappeared. One day when in a cafe, while discussing the 
subject of bravery and courage, some one remarked that "to 
commit suicide requires the higher form of cowardice." He 
vehemently denied that, and to prove his point shot himself 
in the head. He was taken to a hospital where he recovered. 
If I were to describe to you all that he had experienced by 
the time I saw him at twenty-eight, we would have a 
veritable Odyssey. But he never had any direct delusions, 
he had merely fleeting hallucinations and delusions upon 
which he acted rapidly. There is no question about his being 
a rather mild type of dementia praecox, mild in the sense of 
the depth of the symptoms. 

The average case of dementia praecox dements, the patient 
forms his system and then settles down. Mr. N.'s case is 
typical. He had been ill for six to eight years ; he was very 
hallucinatory and delusionary. He would leave his home 
and settle down for a time in some out of town hotel. I 
first saw him out in a southern city, I went over to him and 
called him by his name. He did not so much as glance at 
me, despite the unusual circumstance of hearing his name 
called in a totally strange city. I had to convince the doctors 



COMMON FORMS OF INSANITY 261- 

there that the man was insane. I asked one of them to 
bump into him to see what he would do. The doctor was 
afraid to take the risk, for the patient was quite a husky 
fellow, and so I bumped into him myself. The man did 
not say a word, he walked on without paying me the slightest 
attention. The doctors could not understand how a man 
could stay there in a hotel for years, pay for his board and 
room regularly, and still be insane. But the hotel keeper 
declared that he saw all the while that there was something 
peculiar about the man: he would stay in his room practi- 
cally all the time, wore the same suit all the time, the same 
hat, the same pair of shoes, came down to eat promptly at a 
certain time, and was most methodical in his habits. Such 
patients are orderly and regular to a point of nausea. 
Methodicalness is not necessarily a sign of dementia prsecox, 
but we may well think of the disease when we see people 
who are so extremely methodical. 

The next group of insanity with which I wish to acquaint 
you, the manic depressive group, is very widespread. It is 
designated by that name because, as we have 

, , '.-« . . . Manic 

already said, on a previous occasion, it runs m Depressive 

. , . ~ , . Insanity 

certain phases or cycles. Sometimes the patient 
is excited, exhilarated, restless, manic, and sometimes he is 
melancholy, retarded in thought and action, — depressed. 
Suddenly a wave of excitement lasting a few days, weeks, 
or months, usually two to six months, will come over the 
patient: the emotions run up and gradually down and re- 
main normal for a period. There then may follow another 
similar wave. If you take the patient's history you will find 
that during a life of twenty to thirty years he may have had 
fifteen attacks or more. Sometimes this attack of excite- 
ment is followed by an attack of depression ; the emotions go 
down, the patient feels downcast and depressed. Some pa- 



262 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

tients run a different course. They may just begin with a 
depression, get over it and be a little exalted, just enough to 
feel well and exhilarated without being regarded as in any 
way abnormal, and they are perfectly well. Then probably 
a few years later there comes another depression, and so the 
case continues. When our knowledge of this group of insan- 
ity was rather slight, we designated this phase of the disease 
as a separate case. This state of depression and retardation 
was designated as melancholia, which literally means "black 
bile." The term came from the old Greeks who thought 
that a person who was depressed had liver trouble and that 
when he was purged, he became well. It is for this reason 
that physicians have used purging for such cases. This idea 
is almost entirely disregarded now. 

One very serious danger in this phase of the disease, that 
is, in the depressive state, is that the patient may commit 
suicide. You will often read in the newspapers of a nervous 
breakdown followed by suicide ; we are undoubtedly dealing 
here with a case of the depressive type of manic depressive 
insanity, for there are few other forms of mental disturb- 
ances that terminate in suicide. I do not think I am exag- 
gerating when I assert that probably 85 to 90 per cent, of all 
suicides belong to the depressive type of this disease. 

There are serious dangers also in the manic state of the 
disease. When the attack comes in a very mild form, that 
is, when the patient is just a little exhilarated and feels like 
one who has had a drink or two, he is liable to jump into all 
sorts of reckless ventures. I have seen women who married 
during such a state and were deeply disappointed when 
they became normal once more. I am convinced that many 
cases of marital unhappiness are due just to this fact, one 
or the other of the couple was in such an abnormal state at the 
time of marriage; when things subsided and became normal, 



COMMON FORMS OF INSANITY 263 

there was a mental upset, husband and wife could not agree. 
It is like marrying when in a state of intoxication ; unless you 
can continue drinking, matters cannot fare well. I might 
inform you that I have actually testified in one such case 
where the marriage was annulled on the ground that the 
man had had a number of manic attacks previous to the mar- 
riage, and we could say with more than a certain amount of 
probability that he was suffering from an attack at the time 
he married. 

Another danger in this phase of the disease is that of ex- 
haustion. In the extreme cases of excitement, the patient is 
constantly active; it is necessary to give him the strongest 
kind of medications and sedatives to keep him quiet. If he 
is not confined, he very often continues to talk and move 
about so recklessly and vehemently that he simply develops 
some intercurrent disease and dies. It is remarkable how 
many of these cases are at large and taken for alcoholics. 
I have met them on the streets and in parks and on a few 
occasions have had them taken to the hospital. The casual 
onlooker observes them perform to his delight and amuse- 
ment and regards them as alcoholics, but the trained observer 
usually can make the diagnosis in a minute or two. 

The essential difference between the manic-depressive 
cases and dementia praecox is that the manic-depressive pa- 
tient always recovers under general conditions and never 
shows any mental scar; there is no intellectual disturbance. 
That is why a great many physicians would not designate the 
manic-depressive patient as a case of insanity, unless of 
course he is extreme and delusional; they regard the 
disease as merely an emotional disturbance. But when the 
dementia praecox seemingly recovers from the first episode, 
he always shows to the trained observer the dementia praecox 
reaction, there is always left a mental scar. 



264 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

There is one more form of insanity that I wish to touch 
upon, namely, paranoia. This is a chronic, progressive form 
paranoia of insanity which is absolutely incurable. When 
you examine a paranoiac thoroughly you find that he always 
presented more or less definite characteristics, he always 
showed the type of mental make-up associated with the 
disease. But we usually do not see anything abnormal or 
maladjusted in his mode of reaction until he is thrown on 
his own resources or, generally speaking, until he has to 
come in actual contact with the environment. At the age 
of puberty we already begin to notice certain distinct pe- 
culiarities. First of all, the patient is a sort of quiet, re- 
served personality, an individual who takes no interest in 
the trivialities of life. The history from childhood shows 
that he never played like others, never made friends like 
others. He may have had perhaps some acquaintances but 
never a friend in whom he confided. The normal person is 
always drawn to some one in whom he can confide. Con- 
sciously or unconsciously he realizes that it is unhealthy to 
harbor secrets, for every secret contains something wrong 
or forbidden. But the paranoiac has never formed any 
lasting intimate friendship, he has never learned how to give 
and take emotions freely. He starts out in life with that all- 
too-serious attitude; the element of love which manifests 
itself in childhood in play and later on in friendship and sex 
either is not developed with him, or its normal development is 
retarded and it is turned inward upon himself. Upon reach- 
ing the period of puberty, therefore, when an emotional outlet 
is absolutely necessary, he finds himself in a critical position : 
an emotional wave of puberty comes on, and unable to place 
it properly, he begins to find fault with the environment. 
The young man may feel that he has not received the amount 
of attention or friendship that is properly due him. The 
young lady may complain that people are constantly pointing 



COMMON FORMS OF INSANITY 265 

at her in an insinuating way, or that she has been slighted 
in some way. The situation usually resolves itself into this : 
"people do not like me." Of course, emotions beget 
emotions, if you do not like others, others will not like you, 
if you want friends, you must show friendship. Emerson 
has put it very well : "Love and you shall be loved." The 
world is so full of people that no one will worry about an 
individual who does not come forward himself. The para- 
noiac projects his own feelings to the outside world, and by 
an all too natural mode of reasoning, he finds that the fault 
lies not with him but with the outside world: "People do 
not like me" — and since no one likes to depreciate himself, 
the logical explanation at once suggests itself, — "because I am 
better than they are, therefore they do not like me." As a 
matter of fact that may be sometimes true, the person may 
be in a certain respect better than the people in his environ- 
ment. 

And so when the paranoiac reaches an age when he would 
like to compete, he feels himself too weak or too worthy to 
do so and the result is that he is left to himself, his morbid 
ideas developing all the while more and more. Gradually 
he begins to elaborate who he is, he cannot admit, for in- 
stance, that he belongs to an ordinary plebeian family, he de- 
cides that he must be of better stock. Not long ago I ob- 
served a typical paranoiac; he imagined that he was an il- 
legitimate son of Louis XIV. His life history was ex- 
tremely interesting. His father was about thirty years 
older than his mother, so that when the patient was a little 
boy the father was an old man. The normal relationship, 
then, such as one finds between father and son was here im- 
possible, the discrepancy in age was too great. That is why 
the boy never developed a normal association with his com- 
panions. Besides, the father was unusually attached to the 
child and insisted on having the boy with him all the time. 



266 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

Thus the patient grew up to be a morbid, introspective boy, 
and as he grew older, he gradually developed and elaborated 
• his delusional system. 

Paranoia turns out to reproduce a primitive condition, the 
individual, one might say, regresses to an atavistic state 
where he believes that no one is his friend. When we lived 
in caves, when we were Troglodytes, the human being would 
not dare to put out his head for fear lest his neighbors would 
kill him; like animals, everybody worked exclusively for 
himself, there was nothing in common, there was no sense 
of mutual interest. Gradually with the advance of civiliza- 
tion not only did we make peace with the inhabitants of the 
neighboring cave, but we got out of caves altogether and 
began to build houses. Now we can even sleep with our 
windows open and there is no danger. In other words, we 
are departing from all those conditions which existed in the 
most primordial state. It is therefore important to free the 
child's development of all such primitive tendencies and teach 
him to give and take emotions freely, for otherwise he is 
likely either to continue in a primitive state or not know 
how to place his emotions properly and become neurotic. 

The outstanding mechanisms in the paranoiac are these: 
First, delusions of reference, by which we mean, falsely con- 
struing whatever occurs in his environment to refer to his 
own person. Talk with some one, it matters not about 
what, for example, and the paranoiac will insist that you 
are talking about him. He may hear a sermon in church and 
straightway refer it to himself by proving that the minister 
quoted a certain passage from the Bible with which he was 
only too well familiar. In time he begins to develop perse- 
cutory ideas, he begins to think that people are against him. 
Usually he chooses for his target some intimate person in the 
family. When he fixes on some one, when he actually 
finds a person whom he likes very much, the attachment 



COMMON FORMS OF INSANITY 267 

usually takes a most violent course for a while, when a 
violent process of disillusionment sets in: the new-found 
friend then becomes a traitor and is usually taken as the 
arch conspirator. Gradually the circle widens and widens, 
the conspiracy becomes more and more involved, at first, 
it may be only a brother-in-law or a classmate, later it is 
the whole world that is his enemy. It is remarkable how 
people of this type rationalize a situation. Ask one of them 
why he knows that detectives were following him from New 
York to Washington, and he declares: "When I registered, 
the clerk remarked to another clerk, 'Here he is.' " That 
was proof sufficient. I have seen a man who actually went 
around the world : he maintained that wherever he came, he 
saw detectives at his heels, heard voices and saw people 
watching him. Finally he decided to return to New York 
to give himself up. He did so, and was sent to the asylum. 
It took me a few days to take down his history. Only a 
paranoiac could have gone through all the privations that he 
had experienced. In the course of time the patient begins 
to reason why he is persecuted, he begins to elaborate just 
who he is. And when he finally becomes convinced that he 
is an emperor, or some other great personality he does not 
fail to act like one. If he believes himself to be Christ or a 
savior of some kind, he plays the appropriate role. To the 
average observer his reasoning is most bizarre, sometimes 
though, it is very ingenious. 

There are all kinds of paranoiacs. The original ones are, 
of course, rare ; by those I mean the patients whom you have 
to observe and study for a long time before you can actually 
decide that they are insane. They are often too clever to 
betray themselves ; they realize that they are being examined 
and are very guarded. You have to be equally clever to get 
at the proof, you have to hit the right moment to find the clue 
to the system. It is remarkable how many paranoiacs are 



268 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

taken to court on a writ of habeas corpus and discharged as 
sane. In one hospital for the insane that I visited last fall, 
it was interesting to observe that practically every one of the 
inmates had a legal paper drawn in accordance with the legal 
form, applying for a writ of habeas corpus. Many of the 
patients thus discharged later commit crimes and homicide. 
They are so clever that they often elude the average judge 
or jury; no one but an expert in mental diseases can see 
that they are insane. Thus, I had an interesting experience 
with a classmate of mine, a man of the typical paranoid 
character as I described it, a typical shut-in personality. 
When he was taken out on a writ of habeas corpus his 
mother, wife, brothers, principal of the school where he used 
to teach testified that he was very insane. No one had any 
interest whatsoever in keeping him in the asylum. His own 
relatives and friends, and at least half a dozen teachers from 
his school, who were all sorry for him, all testified to his 
peculiar actions. After a trial lasting ten days the jury was 
out about ten minutes and brought in a verdict that the 
patient was sane. To a jury of laymen, the man's defense 
seemed altogether plausible, and yet the patient was absolute- 
ly insane. The man was released and he might have killed 
many people and caused irreparable harm during the in- 
terval that elapsed between his discharge and his final com- 
mitment to the insane asylum. 

When a case of this character reaches the newspapers, it 
is often held up to the public as a very fine example of how 
doctors kept an absolutely sane person in the asylum. We 
have seen a recent example of this deplorable condition in 
the case of the B. sisters. These two women are just as 
crazy as any two inmates of any State Hospital. They 
represent what we call a "folies a deux," a form of in- 
sanity which affects two people in the same family; some- 
times I have seen it affect three people. It is significant 



COMMON FORMS OF INSANITY 269 

that though these sisters were discharged as insane to 
the custody of some one under bond, the newspapers 
vociferously continued to protest that here were two sisters 
who were kept in the asylum despite the fact that they were 
not insane. The fact of the matter is that the state hospitals 
are overcrowded; they have 25 per cent, more patients than 
they can accommodate ; they are only too pleased to be able 
to discharge patients. The State Hospital in question at 
that very time actually had a campaign requesting relatives 
and friends to relieve them of those patients whom they con- 
sidered well enough to get along at home. On the other 
hand, the doctors are in duty bound not to discharge patients 
who are considered dangerous; how can they discharge pa- 
tients who are distinctly anti-social, who feel that the whole 
world is conspiring against them? As for those folk that 
imagine that doctors take malicious pleasure in keeping people 
in the insane asylum or profit by the patient's confinement, 
they should be reminded that the physician receives a stipu- 
lated salary whether he has one patient or fifty, and that far 
from taking pleasure in keeping him confined, it is in his in- 
terest to see him discharged. In the old days there was the 
prevailing notion that the patients were killed or poisoned in 
the asylum ; to-day we are doing our utmost to have the lay 
world realize that the insane are regarded and treated as 
sick people, to be discharged as soon as they are well. 
Another difficulty is that the lay person usually considers a 
person insane only when he stands on his head and yells non- 
sense ; he considers him perfectly normal if he answers ques- 
tions and talks more or less connectedly and intelligently, as 
for instance, in cases of paranoia. We have been trying for 
years to have the lay public realize the true facts of the 
matter. But when a case such as that of the B. sisters 
is read in the newspapers, all the old stupid prejudices are 
revived once more. Untold harm is done thereby. 



270 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

Before leaving the subject of paranoia I wish to read to 
you parts of the history of a paranoiac. I am sure that it 
ought to prove instructive for, in the first place, it will show 
you more or less concretely the progress of the disease, how 
the patient gradually becomes more and more detached from 
reality, and secondly, what an important part the sex element 
plays in all such mental disturbances, the patient's history 
showing a distinct maladjustment in his love affair. The 
patient is a man 36 years of age, who at my request wrote 
out the history himself. 

"Bringing up strict, with religious atmosphere, not al- 
lowed to play with other children. Were of a somewhat 
'sissy type/ but fairly good scholars. Father not at all 
nervous, but religious and rather strict. Mother extremely 
nervous. Favors one twin, not myself, possibly because she 
is interested in medicine, and he wants to become a doctor. 

"First vivid impression, quite young, four or five years, 
used to undress after bathing with brother and sister 
two years older. Sneaking curiosity as to secondary sexual 
characteristics of sister, looking at her with pleasure, when 
unperceived. Remember remark of aunt to my mother, 'too 
old to dress in same room together with sister/ This roused 
a sense of guilt as to sex, which is still subconsciously re- 
tained. My brother remembers also an experience in the 
bathroom with my sister, each one of the three showing 
parts to other. At the age of six or seven vivid remembrance 
of homosexual experience. About this time experience with 
the genital, it had to be treated." 

He then cites a number of experiences. He dwells at 
length on his homosexuality which he practiced with his 
brother and which consisted simply in masturbation. He 
says: 

"We kept that up until six or eight years of age, when 
we realized its import. I remember arguing with myself 



COMMON FORMS OF INSANITY 271 

'This cannot be wrong, because it gives pleasure without pain 
or wrong consequences.' Later the practice was stopped 
and I found an intense nervous reaction in looking through 
cracks of doors at my sister undressing. At school had 
faint 'crushes' on boys. At college had a 'crush' on a man 
two years ahead. No sex impressions, but a desire to be of 
some service to him, liked to be near him." 

Here he gives a great many experiences of that type at 
the age of 22 or 23 years. Speaking about women he says, 
"Have only been in love once. The girl was a friend of my 
sister's, my older sister, the one now in a sanitarium. This 
sister had 'crushes' on girl friends and teachers, it ended in 
an infatuation, abnormal girl, subjects to attack of insanity. 
This girl friend has since married and has children. She 
was normal, but had led a rather repressed sex life, she was 
a 'nice' girl. I remember that I imagined myself to fall in 
love with her in this way. She was a twin of two sisters. 
Had met them when about 16 or 17 years old. They appre- 
ciated us and we liked them very much. One time driving 
home from a theater party, I noticed her holding hands with 
my sister. She had a 'crush' on my sister, as other young 
college girls did. There was nothing wrong in this re- 
lationship between the two. I was in a rather soft mood, 
and I aspired to deserve the same affection as my sister re- 
ceived. 'If she would only hold my hand like that.' And 
I made up my mind that I was in love with her. There was 
no sexual attraction. It was a rather sublimated emotion 
that I felt towards her. Afterwards I met her in the subway 
with my brother. She sat down and I sat down beside her. 
I think she would rather have had my brother, I had the 
same rather soft, sublimated, tender emotion at that time, but 
I was nervous and excited and my heart beat very fast. 
Later my brother and I were asked out to her home over the 
week end. Hearing that, I became nervous and excited at 



272 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

the idea of seeing her. The whole thing was in my mind. 
However, there was no sex feeling. I was inwardly rest- 
less, but outwardly I was rather self-possessed, while out 
there. I slept little and felt as if I had fever. I remember 
walking with her and my brother, and running races also, 
in which I made a great effort to shine. I tried to talk to 
her, but her attitude was favorable towards my brother who 
liked her in an impersonal way. She did not have any 
strikingly emphasized secondary characteristics of her sex, 
which was rather the reason I liked her." What he means 
is that she did not look like a big woman, but was more of a 
boyish type. 

"I remember sitting indoors, on a sofa, and her inviting 
me to sit beside her as in the subway. At that time I felt 
that to do so would be dishonest, since she had too much 
money for me to be happily married to her. My thoughts 
were socialistic at that time. Yet I had an impulse to do so, 
and I loved her in that way. I did not see her again, but 
did not forget her at all, always hoping to see her by accident. 
One time I actually got my nerve to call, but she was out." 

You can see thus far what difficulty this boy had in ad- 
justing himself to his love life. 

"Another reason I did not press my suit was that I had 
heard that another man was violently in love with her. In- 
stead of pressing my suit, I felt no jealousy, as I ought to, 
but argued that if he was madly in love with her, as he was, 
and I only in a very spiritual way, I could yield better than 
he. She married a third man and it was a great blow to 
me. My emotion was thus always repressed, and as I ap- 
peared self-possessed no one realized it, but altogether I was 
very much perturbed. I had pneumonia a year afterwards, 
being in a rundown condition. I had two trained nurses 
but repressed any sex feeling because it would not be sin- 
cere. I enjoyed talking to them and was interested in their 



COMMON FORMS OF INSANITY 273 

ideas. I have always clung to the ideal which this girl 
seemed to fit. I transferred my interest to my studies, and 
had no friends. 

"All this occurred while this homosexual practice was 
being carried on between my brother and myself. The next 
incident was that up at a certain lake my brother met a girl 
towards whom he had much the same feeling in a more 
transient phase. This period marked the end of our homo- 
sexual practice. We were really ignorant of its real import. 
Altogether we vaguely realized it was wrong. I felt a slight 
attraction towards this girl, who was beautiful, but rather 
stood apart, and let my brother do the talking. This time 
the girl appeared to discourage my brother, and since then I 
have called on her several times. 

"After going through college and beginning the senior part 
of law, just before examination time, my sister, who 
had been long ailing, suddenly became sick and had to be 
taken to the hospital." He enters at length into this matter. 

"During college and professional school I had formed the 
habit of watching girls undress by means of field glasses. I 
did this, sometimes masturbating through an excited im- 
agination. Toward the servants I had no sex feeling, I 
thought little of sex except with regard to this field glass 
habit, which I carried on at intervals. I kept this up 'til last 
fall. 

"After trying to get a job in vain last fall, (the war had 
affected the situation somewhat) at my brother's suggestion 
I went to Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore. I spent 
two weeks sight seeing, then took a laboratory course. I 
made efforts to take an interest in girls, flirting with them in 
street cars. Baltimore is a small city, and some of the girls 
flirt very easily. I went to the Lyric Theatre, where the 
fashionable concerts and plays were given. I lived in a 
hotel, but did not meet any women at all, except at Uni- 



274 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

versity classes. I was interested in the Ph. D. courses, and 
was thinking of taking a degree. I heard that two of the 
Professors at the school were leaders in Baltimore society. 
Desiring to take for once a real interest in girls, and hoping 
to meet one I could fall in love with, I made up my mind to 
speak to them. I went to Professor B. and told him that 
there was a case of insanity in the family and gave the im- 
pression that it had to do with sex, and also that I would 
like to get into Baltimore society. He was very nice to me, 
and when I asked to be introduced to some girls, he said 
that he would see about it. Apparently I did not show the 
proper sex interest, for when I next went to him, he said, that 
the roundabout way was best, and also said, 'Go with normal 
men first/ and smiled, implying sex experience is necessary. 
He told me to join the Johns Hopkins Club, which I did. At 
this time I changed my place from the Hotel to a boarding 
house, because it was cheaper, and the food was better. I 
remember one story told in my hearing at the club." And 
then the patient relates some sort of pun which I never 
could make out. 

"The second time upon my return from a game, I had a 
queer experience. I was standing in front of the waiting 
station, flirting a bit with the girls who passed with 'middies,' 
when there came out two middies with girls and a chaperon, 
evidently their mother. One middy carried a suit case, and 
as I passed one of the girls nudged me with the case as it 
brushed by me. I felt an interest in these girls but did not 
look them over. The mother was evidently a very fine lady 
and they were fashionably dressed. The light haired one 
was rather good looking I thought at the time. The other 
one was dark and rather peculiar looking and had 'sad' eyes. 
This one sat alone, the mother and the light haired one on the 
other side of the car, one seat back. The rest of the car con- 
sisted largely of a rather tough crowd. I sat in the rear seat, 



COMMON FORMS OF INSANITY 275 

but sufficiently near to keep an eye on the one who nudged 
me. The peculiar looking one seemed to be the object of at- 
tention especially to one man, and the light haired one evi- 
dently became much worried, and looked back at me con- 
tinually. At last, this was before I saw this Professor B. 
I thought I should not meet any girls on account of insanity 
in the family. I debated whether to intervene or not. I 
finally decided upon watchful waiting, but the distress of the 
three women increased, until finally I was about to get up 
and look at the man, who got up himself and walked into 
the smoker." 

This idea that the girl nudged him was of course only 
imaginary, as well as the situation regarding the man. 

"This produced of course a great sensation with the girls. 
I had apparently made a hit. They smiled their thanks to 
me, and I smiled back. Then they took off their hats and 
wraps, and tried to flirt with me, arranging their hair. But 
I saw no reason for picking them up, arguing that nice girls 
should not be treated that way. When the electric car 
stopped to change for Washington, they got out. The light- 
haired girl's expression was peculiar, as if she had been hard 
hit. The mother smiled at me rather scornfully, as if to 
say, 'You'll find out who we are, don't worry/ and seemed 
half angry at my attitude. I tried to convey that I would 
have liked to meet them, but circumstances did not permit. I 
later remembered that girl on account of the incident and 
rather idealized her, and thought that she must be in 
Washington society. 

"Evidently in the South it is the custom when one person 
wants to meet another, and for some reason cannot, to bring 
them together at a play or concert. Anyway I saw shortly 
afterwards both girls and picked them out by recognizing 
them among a crowded audience. The first girl was a girl 
of German descent, from the remarks that I heard at my 



276 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

boarding house, which evidently was a secret, for on leav- 
ing for the Alumni meeting at X. they assured me that Balti- 
more was Germania, with great emphasis. These remarks 
were made while discussing nationality. I compared this 
girl with the one I idealized and found I did not care for 
her. 

"A week later I went to a ball game and felt a sort of ex- 
citement in my arm. People left hurriedly and there was a 
sort of excitement of expectancy. A girl sitting next to 
me looked all around the bleachers, as if I was to do the same 
thing as all the others. Finally four or five girls came, and 
the men behind me began to patter with their feet, as if I 
was to walk around. I did so and by careful scrutiny was 
able to locate my Washington friend. Under cold daylight, 
she seemed a different girl, I had seen her at 6 o'clock, and 
yet she had the same features and hair. She laughed at me, 
and encrouched her shoulders over as if to call me down 
from my high horse. After looking her over carefully I re- 
turned to my former seat. A man seated nearby, made this 
remark, 'Well, well, well/ evidently somewhat surprised at 
my lack of gallantry. Before this and after this incident, 
people began to look towards Washington when I passed 
them. I considered this a Southern custom, made to help 
along matrimony. And, after this the ball game continued 
and also they began to turn their heads and indicate unclean 
finger nails. After a particularly aggravating display of 
these signs by a rather fashionable party, one of them said, 
apparently to me, 'This is your last chance/ A lady at the 
ball game, several times touched her mouth significantly, 
and then stuck her fingers in her glove of the other hand, as 
if to show what to think of, kissing and the sexual act 
when I looked at girls, or what to do to be acceptable to 
society." 

You may thus see how nicely these symbolic actions are 



COMMON FORMS OF INSANITY 277 

shown. He interprets everything in his own way, working 
it out in conformity with his own delusional ideas. 

He was to a lecture on physics, but to him it seemed full 
of hints for him. "Work out these values and then we will 
go on," which meant "I am to have sex experience, toil. My 
inexperience prevented me from getting there. After this 
I decided to come to New York, as there was nothing else to 
do in the social line, no one conforming with my ideal. I 
did so, and called on the girl of the B. L. socially, but 
did not get to know her sufficiently to make advances." 

There is nothing unusual about this case when we bear in 
mind that it is a case of insanity. Its most noteworthy facts 
are as follows : First, it is evident that this young man has 
had an abnormal sexual life. There was a constant struggle 
between sensuousness and chastity until the patient became 
insane. He began with the autoerotic sexual outlet, mastur- 
bation, which he was very anxious to suppress. In this he 
succeeded for a time but soon returned to it. There then 
followed the homosexuality with his own brother and a few 
others. Finally he was confronted with the trying problem 
of adjusting himself to heterosexuality, his failure in this 
respect terminating in delusions. His whole delusional 
system was that people were observing him and making re- 
marks about him, disparaging, insulting remarks, because he 
was unable to do his duty sexually; many girls were in- 
terested in him, but he was too slow and not man enough to 
respond to them. He believed that if he were sexually 
normal, the women would have liked him; he was not liked 
because he had had no experiences with them. When the 
patient was asked, therefore, why he did not go right ahead 
and have experiences with women, he replied that he could 
not, that he heard voices telling him that that would be 
wrong and immoral. 

We could continue to speak about the extreme mental 



278 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

cases, the psychoses, for many an hour more, but I feel that 
what I have already told you should suffice to give you a 
general appreciation of the subject, at any rate as far as our 
purposes here are concerned. Before leaving the subject 
entirely I wish to make this one point, namely, that even in 
the so-called normal person there may be observed some of 
those traits that I have pointed out in those extreme mental 
disturbances. That is to say, besides people of the psycho- 
neurotic make-up, the hysterics, compulsive neurotics, etc., 
one meets in life also individuals who are distinctly of the 
paranoid or dementia prsecox or manic type. A great many 
writers have thus come to the conclusion that when such in- 
dividuals ever become insane, they always gravitate toward 
that form of insanity that is compatible with their person- 
ality. That is, when a person of the paranoid make-up be- 
comes insane, he gravitates toward paranoia, a person of the 
dementia prascox type toward dementia praecox. Through 
careful observation and study of different individuals, par- 
ticularly on the experimental basis afforded by the association 
test, we may readily see these types, for we find that in- 
dividuals show certain definite types of reactions to stimuli. 



CHAPTER XI 
THE ONLY CHILD 

That there is really only a difference of degree between 
the most abnormal and the so-called normal, and that the 
degree can be measured in terms of environment can readily 
be shown in cases where regardless of predisposition in con- 
stitution, the environment alone impresses a definite stamp 
on the individual. This can be readily seen in persons who 
have been subjected to a special environment. I am refer- 
ring to the only child. The only child has a special reaction 
to the world which differs in every way from that of his 
cousin, let us say, who has sisters and brothers. We also 
find that the oldest son or daughter differs in every way 
from the youngest son or daughter. 

The oldest son differs from the others because his position 
in his environment was such that he had to develop certain 
characteristic traits. For one thing, he was more aggressive 
than the others, because originally he was the only child in 
the home, when the second child came, though only a year 
later, he already had the advantage over his younger brother, 
the advantage of strength and knowledge. But usually there 
is more than the difference of a year. Moreover the parents 
constantly urge the older brother to take care of the younger 
boy. The result is that as time goes on there is the 
tendency for the oldest son of the family to assume leader- 
ship, so that when the father dies or is killed he becomes 
virtually the head of the family. We see here how the in- 
stitution of the crown prince developed; it was found that 

279 



280 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

when the father died, the oldest son was more fit to rule 
than the others by virtue of his standing in the community 
right in his own home. 

And so it is with the "only" or "favorite" child; he too 
occupies a special position in the home. Whether wilfully 
or not, parents have always pampered and spoiled the only 
child. When people love each other they usually enhance the 
love-object: to the man his lady-love is the most charming 
creature in the world, to the woman, her lover is the greatest 
man on earth. After they have married a process of disil- 
lusionment sets in; the most charming woman becomes an 
ordinary girl with all the weaknesses and shortcomings of 
her sex, and the greatest man an ordinary human being. But 
there is a compensation with the coming of the first child, 
the gap begins to be filled, there develops a community of 
interest between husband and wife. To the man there is a 
compensation in his little girl in whom he tries to realize all 
those ideals that he found in the woman when he first met 
her but which seemed to have gone after living intimately 
with her for some time. The little girl now occupies a 
special position in the home, the father has a special interest 
in her, and with no brother or sister to share her father's 
affection the result is that she becomes spoiled. In a state of 
nature, the male animal really takes no interest in the young. 
He leaves them as soon as they are independent enough to 
seek their own food. It is different with human beings, the 
marriage institution devolves upon us the duty of living to- 
gether. Some compensation is necessary and wherever there 
is only one child, both parents turn to the child to fill the 
emotional gap formed because of the disillusionment due to 
the original enormous enhancement of the partner. 

Another serious factor in the development of the only 
child is that he meets with no competition at home. Where 
there are three, four, or five children, as there normally 



THE ONLY CHILD 281 

should be, there is constant conflict, they fight among each 
other and thus learn to adjust themselves to the struggle 
for existence. But take the little one who is kept in the 
home with no one to oppose its will, on the contrary, whose 
every wish is gratified and who is always guided and pro- 
tected most jealously, who is master of all he surveys in the 
home, what a pitiable sight this weakly brat presents when 
put out into the world a£ the age of five or six! The poor 
thing is helpless. He does not know how to act, he distrusts 
everybody, he cannot get along with any one. 

One of the most serious handicaps that the only child has 
to cope with is his abnormal attachment to the mother, what 
we call, his fixation upon the mother image. As we have 
said before, every parent puts her stamp, her image on the 
child. The child's first impulses of love are always directed 
to the parent, that is, a little boy's first sweetheart is always 
his own mother, her image is definitely imprinted upon his 
mind, so that forever afterwards the child is always guided 
by this image. The same relation exists between the girl 
and her father. At the age of prepubescence the children 
normally begin to tear themselves away from the parents ; a 
little boy will no longer even like to be hugged and kissed 
by his mother, he will feel that it is not quite right, that it is 
terribly unmanly. He will begin to find other women with 
whom he will fall in love. The history taken from men often 
showed distinctly that at 8, 9, or 10 years of age they were 
madly in love. But the only child does not learn to detach 
his libido from the mother, always guarded, as he is by 
maternal affection. Though he is constantly guided by it in 
his selection, the child normally tears himself away from the 
mother image. But in the case of the only child, where the 
mother had the opportunity to imprint her image on the boy 
for a much longer time and in a considerably stronger way, 
the image of the mother becomes fixed so that in later life 



282 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

he is always controlled by it, he cannot trust any one but 
his mother or some one resembling her. It is noteworthy 
that the woman whom the child first takes as a substitute for 
the mother is usually of about his mother's age. It is only 
as he grows older that he begins to be more and more inter- 
ested in younger women. It is a common observation that 
the younger the man the older the woman that attracts him. 
But he behaves very differently, when he enters his second 
childhood ; it seems then the other way around, the older the 
man, the younger the woman that attracts him. As age ad- 
vances there seems to be a regression to the more or less 
infantile, so that it is not at all uncommon to find many old 
men seeking young girls. We see this condition in its ab- 
normal form in cases of senile dementia where the old man 
in dotage actually attempts flirtations with young girls be- 
cause of his mental deterioration. In normal cases, the man 
merely evinces a kindly and fatherly interest in the girl. 

In transferring this early attachment from the mother to 
other women, the child is very often a source of much 
anguish to the parent. Many a mother sometimes has ex- 
perienced a nervous breakdown when it became evident that 
the son was tearing himself away from her. It is hard to 
realize what struggles some women have even later when 
their sons finally choose a mate. They never find a single 
girl whom they approve of. We have here the reason 
for the mother-in-law theme. This condition exists every- 
where, even among savages, and it is due to this one crucial 
fact, that the mother-in-law either loves her son to such an 
extent that she does not want any other woman to take him 
away from her and does not actually find a woman worthy 
enough of her boy, or living through her daughter's life she 
identifies herself with her and therefore tends to fall in love 
with her daughter's lover. It thus happens sometimes, that 
the daughter is actually jealous, and I have had many women 



THE ONLY CHILD 283 

who have corroborated this from their own experience. Oc- 
casionally the press will report the case of a man who courted 
the daughter and married the mother, and vice versa. We 
have here essentially the same image and it is easy enough to 
transfer its influence from the one to the other. 

The only child can do very little on his own initiative, but 
consciously or unconsciously depends largely upon the 
mother's influence. I remember once treating a patient, a 
last child, 1 who had a domineering mother. It seemed that 
he was never able to do anything without her. He came to 
New York to find employment, but could not make up his 
mind to accept a position, despite the fact that many splendid 
opportunities were offered him. He would come to me 
and we would weigh the situation pro and con. I saw no 
other reason for his indecision and procrastination than his 
inherent weakness to decide. Finally I discovered that his 
mother was wont to bid him do something in this manner: 
"Jack, if I tell you to do it, do it." One day he came to 
me with the same problem and I decided to resort to that 
magic formula. I said to him : "If I tell you to do it, do it." 
And surely enough, he replied: "Alright, Doctor." 

The only child rarely marries, and if he does, his wife is 
not at all to be envied. As we pointed out, the average boy 
in a home of four or five children, where the mother has 
no time to gratify the child's ever -increasing emotional 
cravings, fixes as he grows older from one woman to an- 
other, seeking a substitute for the parent in the person of 
a teacher, nurse, hairdresser, etc. He transfers his emotions 
to every newcomer in the home. But the only child receives 
so much attention and love from the parent at home that he 
does not learn to direct his libido toward others, and as he 
grows older, his libido remains more or less fixed upon the 

1 We must remember that the last child presents the same problem 
as the only child, particularly the last child who is removed from 
the other children by about three or four years. 



284 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

parent. Occasionally nature asserts itself and a powerful 
stream of libido wells forth: he is drawn to some woman 
and may even go as far as becoming engaged to her. But 
difficulties soon arise. It is not at all uncommon for an only 
son to come to me on his wedding day imploring me to do 
something to stay the marriage. On such an occasion one 
man expressed to me the fear that perhaps he was suffering 
from appendicitis, perhaps, he felt, he should be sent to the 
hospital. I assured him that he had nothing of the sort, and 
he continued to persuade me, "I really feel a pain, doctor, 
maybe I have." I advised him not to marry the girl, I as- 
sured him that he would not be rendering her anything in 
the nature of a favor. But the family physician was terrified 
at my advice and the mother politely informed me that I was 
a vicious person. And so the poor fellow was led to the 
ceremony like the proverbial lamb to be slaughtered. Now 
divorce proceedings are going on. How much better would 
it be to have stopped the fiasco on the wedding, what trouble 
and mortification would have been saved. I have observed 
also men of this type suddenly seized with all manner of 
hysterical aches and pains when the time came for them to 
keep the appointment that they had made with some young 
lady: they are loathe to go. The average normal man is 
delighted to go out and meet women, play cards, flirt, love, 
and marry. But these folks are too weak. Only the other 
day one of these men remarked to me : "If I would not have 
it so nice at home, I would probably marry, but as it is I do 
not feel like it." He is of the race of only children and his 
mother guards him like the apple of her eye. That is the 
very expression the fond parent used when telling me about 
her "seven-footer" who is about 45 years old. When she 
learned that I advised her boy to marry, she became terribly 
alarmed and came to me at once and told me just what she 
thought of me. She felt that although he was strong and 



THE ONLY CHILD 285 

healthy now, he still needed mother's care, for as a boy, he 
was delicate and weak and always had colds. 

The only son generally continues to live in his own little 
sphere, quietly and apparently well, but with the death of 
the mother he often suffers a breakdown. I have reported 
the case of a man, the last child, a favorite son, though not 
an only son. He was really an only child, as there was a gap 
of about ten years between him and the other children; he 
was considered by all in the home to be the "kid" in the 
family. He grew up to be a "nice" man, graduated from 
college and became a lawyer. Meanwhile his mother was get- 
ting older and older. She was about 6j years old, and her 
chronic invalidism confined her to the house. One day it oc- 
curred to the young man that it was wrong for him to go 
downtown to the office, stay there all day and then go out so- 
cially at night : he felt that he ought to be more with his old 
mother. He decided to come home an hour earlier each day ; 
soon he made it two hours and so he continued to leave the 
office earlier and earlier until he finally resigned from his posi- 
tion and stayed home all the time. The father was about 
eighty and the son hated him with a terrible hatred. He used 
to observe : "The only thing my old man does is torture my 
mother." Finally he resigned from his clubs and the regi- 
ment with which he used to go out drilling, and stayed at 
home to take care of his dear mother entirely. Presently 
he stopped shaving; he had no desire to leave the house; 
he neglected his person. The mother and the other members 
of the family protested against this, they felt there was 
something wrong. The young man maintained that the 
children were heartless to let the mother stay alone at home. 
They offered to stay with her, but he refused, he felt that 
his sister could not take the care of the poor woman that 
he did. His fond hope was that the father would soon die 
and he would be alone with his dear mother. He slept in 



286 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

a room between hers and the father's because for years he 
was afraid that the latter might come in at night and disturb 
her, so concerned was he over her welfare. Soon the father 
died, and a few days later the mother. Her death precipi- 
tated the son's complete breakdown. He would go to her 
cemetery and remain there all day, he desired to commit 
suicide on her grave. He came home and had delusions of 
self -accusation. He charged himself with having shortened 
his mother's life: he cited any number of instances when he 
could have done things that would have saved her. He also 
blamed himself for the father's death and was mortified at 
his ill-treatment of him. In one word, he began to show 
glaring symptoms of dementia praecox which he had for 
years, but which no one, of course, recognized. Every one 
thought that his behavior was just an expression of extreme 
devotion. Such cases are not at all rare, though, of course, 
they are not all as extreme. 

It has always been a source of much interest to me to note 
how many of the so-called confirmed bachelors marry after 
some serious illness, after they have been operated, let us 
say, for kidney trouble or appendicitis. And what is just 
as interesting is to observe that it is no one less than the 
nurse herself with whom the devoted son has fallen in love. 
I confess, before I knew very much about the psychology of 
the unconscious, I was a little surprised at these tricks of 
amor. Now I realize that these men find again the mother 
in the nurse, the woman who takes mother's untiring interest 
in them, administers hot applications to their bellies, and 
performs all manner of personal services for them. Of 
course, they rationalize their attachment as an expression 
of gratitude on their part, but fundamentally the affair 
cannot be regarded as anything other than an unconscious 
harping back to the mother's influence. 

The only child may transfer very readily, — but very badly. 



THE ONLY CHILD 287 

He quickly forms a strong attachment and just as quickly 

a strong dislike. This form of reaction can be observed 

even at an early age. I have here a letter that a father of 

an only daughter sent me, showing the typical mode of 

transference. 1 It was written by a very precocious girl of 

11 to her father, who was out of town, after she had had 

two conferences with me: 

"A wise and all powerful man has been interviewed, etc. 

At all times the soft pedal was in evidence and he gradually 

reminded me of Socrates. He was highly pleased when I 

informed him of my comparison. One more mortal has 

been added to my following list of ideals : Lincoln, ideal 

man; Bonaparte, warrior; Shakespeare, author; Caruso, 

singer; Pavlowa, dancer; Mrs. Vernon Castle, girl and big 

looker; Fred Stone, comedian; Prof. Brill, Doctor." But 

I regret to say that she was so utterly disillusioned in me 

after her third interview, that she would have nothing 

more to do with me. This is a typical example of quick 

transference, first in the positive and then in the negative 

direction. There was no more good reason for her strong 

aversion than for her comparing me to Socrates. The point 

merely was that at first I may have reminded her of her 

father by the part I played and she at once identified me with 

him. But on the second occasion, I could no longer fit in 

with her image, and I was at once struck off from her list 

of the great and elite. We see here a typical only child in 

1 The term transference is very often misused by so-called psycho- 
analysts. They seem to think that a proper transference requires 
the patient to fall in love with the physician. This notion causes 
much harm and I have seen cases in which it has actually led to 
scandal, to say nothing of the fact that it renders the whole psycho- 
analytic treatment absurdly fruitless. Neither Freud nor his school 
ever advocated such an idiotic idea. The transference mechanism 
involves a giving and taking of hostile and affectionate emotions 
alike; it does not mean exclusively one or the other. Every indi- 
vidual's transference is always in terms of the sum total of his 
present reactions to the environments. To understand, therefore, 
the one, we must understand the other. 



288 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

the literal sense of the word, she forms enormous likes to-day 
and just as enormous dislikes to-morrow. 

From what I have said we must not infer that every only 
child is hopeless. If brought up properly he can turn out to 
be a very desirable citizen and may very often develop into a 
leader. 1 He has many desirable attributes which when used 
in the proper direction place him in the foremost ranks 
among men. It is instructive to note that what we pointed 
out regarding the development of the crown-prince institu- 
tion applies also to such rulers as Presidents of republics 
who depend on the people for their election, or, in other 
words, that Presidents of republics are still only sons, oldest 
or favorites and though elected by the people have the same 
characteristics as those oldest sons who developed the 
crown-prince institution. This is actually borne out by facts. 
Washington, Adams, Madison, Jackson, Grant, Hayes, 
for instance, were the oldest sons ; Monroe was an only son, 
and it is significant that we owe the Monroe Doctrine to 
him; so were Van Buren, Buchanan (and he was a bach- 
elor!), and Johnson. Lincoln was the second, but really 
the only son ; Roosevelt also, as you know, was the only son. 
Harrison, Tyler, Taylor were the third sons (and it is not 
surprising that these gentlemen do not stand out very con- 
spicuously). 

The only child has played a conspicuous part in various 

fields by reason of his aggressive qualities. It is noteworthy 

that the first advertiser in the modern sense of the word, was 

an only child. He was Kiselak by name, and was born in 

Vienna. As he did not wish to be a merchant, he entered 

1 What I say about the only child holds true also of the oldest 
child, for in view of the importance of the impressions received 
during the first few years of life, an individual that has been the 
only boy or girl in the family during that important period will 
show a great many of the only child's prominent characteristics, 
though he may not show the latter's typical reaction. 



THE ONLY CHILD 289 

upon a literary career, but his earnings from that source 
were so meager that he was compelled to live on the money 
that his parents had left him when they died. One evening 
while in the company of a group of young writers, some 
of the men began to poke fun at his apparent lack of success 
and fame in the literary world. He was deeply hurt and 
right there and then made a wager with one of the men who 
mocked him that within ten years his name would be famous 
all over Europe; no specification was made as to how he 
would do it. He was twenty-eight years old when he started 
a tour through Europe to carry out his intentions. He 
carried the simplest kind of paraphernalia, a knapsack and 
two cans of paint, one of white and one of red. Whenever 
he came to a mountain, he would climb up on its most 
prominent part and there in huge letters paint his name in 
either red or white paint as seemed most desirable under the 
circumstances. For six years he continued to do this until 
he suddenly died ; the name of Kiselak became known to all 
travelers. Everybody wondered who this man could be, he 
began to be talked about far and wide. This is characteristic 
of the only child, he does not give up what he has set his 
mind to do. 

I have investigated various activities in life to discover to 
what extent the only or the oldest child predominates in 
those activities. Among the great religious teachers, I find 
that Confucius and Paul the Apostle were the first born, 
Buddha was an only son, Brahm was the oldest child, 
William Penn was a first born and his mother's favorite. 
Cotton Mather was the first born in a family of ten. Martin 
Luther was a favorite, though not an only child. Bunyon 
was the oldest and favorite son, St. Francis was the first 
born and his mother's favorite. Among men of science, 
Kepler and Galileo were the oldest sons. Among educators 
and teachers, Pestalozzi, Bacon, Froebel and Erasmus were 



2 9 o PSYCHOANALYSIS 

the youngest in the family, Rousseau was the second and 
last child, but as his older brother ran away as a child and 
was lost, the noted author of Emile was really an only child. 
This is the briefest possible list, and is intended merely to be 
suggestive. 

You may wonder why so many of the world's greatest 
teachers were the youngest children of the family. We 
should bear in mind that the youngest child also occupies a 
special position in the home. Because the oldest child is the 
first one to instruct the younger children he becomes espe- 
cially fitted by his environment to teach. The youngest child, 
fathered and mothered, as he is constantly by the others, 
has his shortcomings pointed out to him so repeatedly that 
if he has any worth and virile qualities in him at all, he 
invariably turns out to be a teacher just to show his brothers 
and sisters that he can teach just as well as they. If they 
are of the proper stuff and are not utterly squelched by the 
others in the home, they turn out to be leaders themselves, 
and strange to say, many take to teaching. 

To give you a general idea of the more or less character- 
istic early development of the only child, his relation to the 
parent, his place in the home, his later problems and con- 
flicts, I can do no better than to read to you a dream together 
with its more or less fragmentary analysis given to me by 
one of my patients, an only son, suffering of what I diag- 
nosed as a mixed neurosis. He is afraid to be out alone, to 
ride in subways and over bridges, etc.; he has also some 
obsessive thoughts of the compulsion neurotic type. I must 
also add that he is married and that he entered into matri- 
mony only because he was afraid and found a protector in 
his wife. He would have remained single had he not found 
a woman whom he could trust. His dream runs as follows : 

"1 dreamed of going on the way to the apartment where 
I live. The sky then became very dark; a storm was ap- 



THE ONLY CHILD 291 

proaching. There were many thunder sounds and some 
lightning. The people were all standing and looking towards 
the west, from which direction this peculiar storm seemed to 
be coming. Gradually it began to rain and storm, and at 

that time I was about at St., and then it occurred to 

me that I had better go into my mother's apartment, I went 
to the house but decided not to go in. Then I wanted to 
go in, and so I kept on struggling and finally did not go in." 

Here are some instructive facts that the analysis revealed : 
"I slept with my mother until the age of six or seven. My 
mother then had an illness of some duration. Then I slept 
with my father until the age of 12." It is noteworthy that 
in practically every case of this type the boy or girl slept 
with the parents until a very late age. I am glad to say that 
we do not find this practice in the average home, the child 
does not sleep with his mother or father at the age of six 
or seven. But it is usual in the cases of only children. Such 
a practice is distinctly harmful to the normal sexual develop- 
ment of the child, it interferes with his normal emotional 
development. Sleeping with the parents involves contact 
and thus produces a precociousness in the sex life ; the child's 
emotions are abnormally stimulated. If we were savages 
there would be no harm in having a child sleep with the 
parents, because we would act as savages upon reaching 
maturity. But as civilized beings we behave differently upon 
reaching maturity; in other words, an individual may be 
old enough to indulge in all kinds of sexual practices, but 
he is not allowed or supposed to do so until he reaches a 
certain age. 

The patient then continued to relate how unusually at- 
tached he was to his mother and grandmother when a boy 
of five or six. "I recall being told by my mother that when 
I went to school at the age of six, mother had to go with me 
and that it was only after a few days of staying at the school 



292 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

that I could be induced to stay there alone. I cried and 
raised some little rumpus." 

When I asked the patient what games he played when he 
was little, he informed me that he was fond of dolls up to 
the age of seven or eight. He remembered in particular one 
large doll which he dressed up like a little girl. This is 
significant, for it is well known that many effeminate men 
played with dolls when they were young children. Playing 
with dolls is essentially a feminine game. I have studied the 
question for a number of years and I feel that the only 
reason why dolls are liked by little girls is because they 
appeal to the feminine instinct, the desire for children. As 
Victor Hugo puts it, "A woman's last doll is her first child." 
A healthy boy will refuse to play with dolls; the normal 
boy always gravitates to games of the aggressive type. This 
is as it should be. Indeed, we should always encourage a 
boy to engage in those games that help to develop qualities 
of manhood. On the other hand, I have observed men who 
were not effeminate though they had played with dolls when 
they were children. These, however, showed the pernicious 
effects of the practice in some other way. Thus I recall at 
this moment the case of a big, strong fellow, an only son, 
brought up by his mother and aunt, his father having died 
when he was very young. I learned that the only type of 
woman that attracted him was the woman with yellow hair, 
of the doll type, and this despite the fact that his mother 
was not of that type. Analysis showed, however, that as a 
child he always played with dolls and had a particular attach- 
ment to a big doll with whom he slept and fondled for years. 

From the fragmentary analysis I have thus far given you 
of the patient's case, you may readily see that the patient 
was predisposed to his neurosis, first, by the fact that he was 
an only child, and secondly, by the fact that his sex life was 
stimulated at too early an age. He had to repress conse- 



THE ONLY CHILD 293 

quently very much more than the normal boy later on in 
life. As we have already learned, an unusual amount of 
repressed libido manifests itself in anxiety and it is this 
anxiety which is at the basis of his neurosis. In the dream 
we see him struggling: he really wants to return to his 
mother but finally decides not to. This is exactly his problem 
in actual life. Fortunately he made a good selection, but his 
wife is at the very most only a poor substitute to him for his 
mother. If the latter were strong enough to help him he 
never would have married the woman. He had to have 
some one take the place of his poor old debilitated mother. 
As a matter of fact, he is always seriously thinking whether 
he should not give up his profession and stay home with 
her until her death. In the dream he realizes his wish not 
to return to his mother. This followed our discussion on the 
subject, as a result of which the patient was beginning to 
gain more and more insight into his condition. 

The intrinsic problem of the only child, his fixation upon 
the mother, has been noted in literature. I recall at this 
present moment a little conversation in Bernard Shaw's 
"Pygmalion" in which the author sums up the situation of 
the only son most admirably. Prof. Higgins, an only son, 
speaking with his mother : 

"Higgins : I have picked up a girl. 

"Mrs. H. : Does that mean that some girl has picked 
you up? 

"Higgins : Not at all, I do not mean a love affair. 

"Mrs.H.: What a pity! 

"Higgins: Why? 

"Mrs. H. : Will you never fall in love with any one under 
45 years ? When will you discover that there are some rather 
nice looking young women about? 

"Higgins: I cannot be bothered with young ones. My 



294 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

idea of a woman is some one as much like you as possible ; 
some habits lie too deeply to be changed." 

How well the author sums up the problem, it is absolutely 
true to type. 

Just a few words before closing on prophylaxis. Of 
course, it would be best for the individual as well as the 
race that there should be no only children. However, when 
this cannot be avoided by virtue of ill health or death of one 
of the parents the child need not necessarily become neurotic 
and belong to any of the categories mentioned above. It all 
depends upon its subsequent bringing up. 

When we read the history of only children we find that 
only those who have been brought up wrongly develop into 
abnormal beings, those who are not pampered and coddled 
have the same chances as other children. As classical ex- 
amples we may mention Nero and Confucius, the former 
was a spoiled only child, while the latter was a well-bred only 
child. An only child should be made to associate with other 
children who will now teach him that he is not the only child 
in the world. This should begin at a very early age. I 
have seen many "nervous and wild" only children who were 
completely changed after a few weeks' attendance in a 
kindergarten or public school. But what is still more im- 
portant is that only children should not be gorged with 
parental love. Parents should take care that such children 
should not develop an exaggerated idea of their own per- 
sonality and think that they are the center of the universe. 
For individuals imbued with such paranoid ideas are bound 
to come into conflict with their fellow men. 

The problem is more complicated when we come to 
prophylaxis in relation to psychosexuality and I regret that 
I am unable to enter here into a long discussion. I shall 
merely say that proper sex regulation does not necessarily 
imply repression and extermination of all sex feelings, and 



THE ONLY CHILD 295 

that the requisite for perfect manhood and womanhood are 
all the impulses and desires that are normally common to 
men and women. 

In conclusion I wish to say that the only child is a morbid 
product of our present social economic system. He is 
usually an offspring of wealthy parents who, having been 
themselves brought up in luxury and anxious that their 
children should share their fate, refuse to have more than 
one or two children. By their abnormal love they not only 
unfit the child for life's battle but prevent him from develop- 
ing into normal manhood, thus producing sexual perverts 
and neurotics of all descriptions. 



CHAPTER XII 
FAIRY TALES AND ARTISTIC PRODUCTIONS 

The difficulties of adjustment as seen in the only child, 
which are mainly due to the fact that the individual cannot 
live in conformity to the principle of reality too often produce 
neuroses and psychoses. Whenever we study the life his- 
tory of such a psychosis we find that the patient has been 
fitted, as it were, by his environment for the abnormal part 
he is to play. In brief, all cases amenable to examination 
show that long before the psychosis developed he has, as it 
were, been prepared for his delusions and hallucinations. 
The only child living alone has to imagine himself playing 
with a younger brother because he is in great need of human 
companionship ; the last child being dominated and tyrannized 
by parents and older brothers and sisters perforce has to 
imagine himself a hero overcoming them all, — a Jack the 
Giant Killer. Or the sensitive predisposed child whose 
primitive impulses have not been properly adjusted must 
dispose the feelings emanating from them somehow in the 
form of fancies and dreams. Such processes of adjustment 
have given rise to a literature widely known as fairy tales. 

Having their origin in an attempt at adjustment through 
the creation of an imaginary world after one's own heart, 
so to say, fairy tales are invariably expressions of the wish 
motive. The individual tries to supplement in the imagina- 
tion what is denied him in reality. It makes no difference 
where the fairy tale comes from, whether from Iceland or 
India, it always shows the wish fulfillment tendency when 

296 



FAIRY TALES 297 

analyzed. Hearn's story of the "Nun in the Temple of 
Armida" will serve as a typical example of how the wish 
fancy motivates the fairy tale. 

Oda is patiently waiting with her little boy for the return 
of her husband, who was for a long time in the service of 
his feudal lord. She is a very pious and devoted wife and 
in her anxious expectation she performed many strange 
ceremonial acts. She offered a miniature meal for her 
husband such as was offered to the Gods, and if steam was 
formed on the inside of the place which was covered, she 
was pleased because that was a sign that he was alive. She 
loved her little boy and occupied herself with him almost 
constantly. She went on pilgrimages to Daheyam Moun- 
tain with her little boy, where all were wont to go who were 
anxiously awaiting their beloved relatives. But Anid, her 
husband, died in a foreign land and shortly thereafter there 
followed the death of the little boy. After going through 
a very long period of depression she began to collect very 
small toys ; she used to spread out little baby dresses on the 
lawn and talk to them and fondle them smilingly. This 
action brought on convulsive sobs. She then resorted to the 
rite of conjuring up the spirits of the deceased and received 
the following consoling message: 

"Oh, mother, do not cry for my sake, it is not right to 
cry over the dead. For their silent way leads over the 
stream of tears and if mothers cry the flood rises high and 
the soul cannot rest and wanders restlessly to and fro." 
Since then she stopped crying but refused to marry and 
showed a liking for little things. Everything seemed too big 
for her. Her room, her chair, her bed were all too big for 
her. She made a little baby house and tried to live in places 
that were toylike. Her parents then advised her to become 
a nun in a tiny little temple with the smallest altar and 
Buddha images. She entered the small Temple of Armida 



298 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

and spent her time in weaving very small chairs which, 

although too small for practical use, were bought by some 

who knew of her history. Her greatest pleasure was in the 

society of little children whom she would imitate in every 

respect. When she died a tiny tombstone was placed over 

her grave. 1 

Here we can see that the mother identified herself with 

her little boy, trying to realize in this way her abnormal wish. 

We find this mechanism among primitive men, children, and 

normal and abnormal people alike. We know, for instance, 

how the savage will daub himself to resemble his god. The 

child, because his greatest desire is to be big, walks on stilts 

and dresses up like its elder. In our modern times we have 

spiritualism. People resort to the spiritualist in order to 

realize their wishes. It is a surprisingly easy matter to detect 

the whole fraud when we bear in mind that the medium 

relies entirely upon the suggestions of the audience. When 

he opens the seance, for instance, with "I see a child, it is 

looking for its mother," we may rest assured that there is 

bound to be in the audience a brooding and sorrowful woman 

who had lost her child and who will consequently react to 

this with apparently marked emotions; her reaction will be 

such as to tell the medium that he is on the right track. Our 

inspired friend now has a basis on which to proceed. His 

messages are not from the departed, they are merely wishes, 

which he has pieced together as best he could, from the 

suggestions that he has received from the audience. In the 

same way women wonder how the fortune teller could know 

that they are in love : they do not realize that they consulted 

him because of that very fact. In the final analysis, all such 

interests on the part of men and women may be reduced to 

the one fundamental fact, — that we always strive to realize 

our wishes. 

a Cf. Riklin: Wunscherfiillung und Symbolikin Marchen Denticke, 
Wien, 1908. 



FAIRY TALES 299 

The tear motive found in the story of the Nun of Armida 
is seen in many other fairy tales. We find the following tale 
in Ludwig Beechstein's Fairy Book: 

Three days and nights a mother cried at the sick bed of 
an only child, but it died. The mother was seized with 
terrible pain. She ate nothing and drank nothing for three 
more days, crying incessantly and calling for the child. Then 
the door opened noiselessly and the child stood before her. 
It was now a beautiful little angel and smiled at her ecstat- 
ically. In its hand it carried a little pitcher which was almost 
overflowing. The child spoke the following: "Oh dearest 
mother, cry no longer for me. Behold your tears which 
you shed for me are collected in this pitcher. Only one more 
tear and it will overflow and I'll have no rest in my grave 
and no peace in heaven. Please cry no more. I am an angel 
and have angels to play with." We see here the wish motive 
most admirably rationalized. The same theme is treated 
with slight variation by the Grimm brothers. 

To grasp their deeper significance many fairy tales must 
be interpreted symbolically. Here is a typical example: 

There was once a man who had three daughters. He 
was going to the market and asked his daughters what he 
should bring them home. The oldest daughter wanted a 
golden spinning wheel, the second daughter wanted a golden 
reel, and the youngest daughter, Oda, said, "Bring me that 
which will run under your wagon on your return from 
market." The father bought the two daughters the things 
they desired. On his way home he suddenly beheld a snake 
under the wagon. He caught it for his youngest daughter. 
He threw it in front of the gate and left it there for Oda. 
When she came out the snake began to talk to her, saying, 
"Oda dear, may I not come into the house ?" And Oda said, 
"My father brought you to the door and now you wish to 
come in ?" But she let the snake come in. When he entered 



300 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

the house, he asked to go into her bedroom ; then when Oda 
was getting into bed, he wished to be taken to bed. He then 
became transformed into a young prince, who could be re- 
deemed only in this manner. From what we have already 
said about dream symbolism it is not hard to see the sig- 
nificance of this story. The snake very clearly represents 
the male elements, and we have here a simple sexual wish. 
It is noteworthy that we encounter this particular symbolism 
also in insanity. Thus one of my patients in a hospital 
imagined that a snake lived within her body, and one day 
she informed me that it was in her genital. We see here 
how well the symbolism is carried out. 

Fairy tales representing essentially an abnormal gratifica- 
tion of the individual's inner strivings and wishes, it is not 
at all surprising to find that they are invariably products of 
shut-in, seclusive personalities, persons who never came in 
normal contact with other people, and who generally led an 
abnormal existence. Such individuals resorted to the fairy 
tale as a mode of emotional gratification. Thus Andersen 
did not see a single child up to the age of eleven or twelve. 
In fact, when he was placed in contact with children he 
could not get along with them. He confessed himself that 
he used to spin phantom children in his brain with whom he 
constantly played. This is not surprising, for if you take a 
child who has any desire at all to associate with others and 
keep him all to himself, he will invariably create some 
imaginative companion. Thus I have in mind the case of 
a young girl who continued to fancy that she had a little 
companion * she would buy various toys for it, save Christ- 
mas presents for it, and insist that mother buy an extra ticket 
for it when she was taken to the theater. 

It is because this preformed mechanism of fancying exerts 
the most pernicious influence in the individual's later life, 
that I am so strongly opposed to fairy tales. Take the case 



FAIRY TALES 301 

of a patient who broke down when the woman he was about 
to marry was shot. He was continually obsessed with 
fancies about her. He would find himself, for instance, 
unconsciously opening the door of his car to let her in, 
adding, "Hurry, dear, we have to get there in time." For 
many hours of the day he would actually engage in imaginary 
conversations with the woman whom he had lost. It is 
significant that analysis revealed that the man formed in 
early childhood a strong habit of fancying. Having learned 
in childhood to satisfy himself with phantoms, he now found 
it impossible to resign himself to the fact that she was dead, 
and lived with her in his imagination. There is no doubt at 
all that such a tendency to fancy in early childhood is detri- 
mental to the individual's psychic development, for we cannot 
cope with an inexorably real world if we live in fancies. 

There are quite a number of interesting fancies of grown- 
ups that I could cite to you, that may all be traced to the 
influence of an early strong tendency to fancy. I shall read 
a few: 

The scene of this story was laid in the suburbs of one of 
the principal cities of the United States where families of 
means and education reside. E. S., who lived here, was a 
governess in the family of Mrs. L., and had such a pleasing 
personality that she attracted in rather an unusual way the 
friends of her employer. She was engaged to a rich English- 
man who owned an estate. She would read extracts from 
his letters to her friends, and announced that he was coming 
to this country. Although Mrs. L. invited him to dine with 
her there was always the excuse of a previous plan preventing 
the visit. E. S. would describe to her employer the pleasures 
she enjoyed with him, and how he would take her to the 
train and they would talk until it came in. At last the date 
was set for her marriage to take place at the home of Mrs. L. 
Owing to the unusual romantic conditions, great interest was 



302 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

evinced by her friends, who all helped with the making of 
her trousseau. Mrs. L.'s little daughter was to accompany 
her to Europe for a short visit. A short time before the 
wedding day word came from Mr. C. that certain conditions 
had arisen to prevent him from coming over, but he had 
made proper arrangements for the marriage to take place 
in his own home. Although this came as a great blow to 
the governess and her friends the plans were changed and 
accommodations secured on the steamer for the governess, 
child and rector. They went into the city to spend the night 
in a hotel because the steamer sailed in the morning. It was 
in the morning that she confessed that it was a fascinating 
story that she had woven in her brain. Her relatives were 
sent for and she was sent to a sanitarium. 

There was a somewhat similar case reported in the news- 
papers some years ago of a woman who continued with her 
fancies to the supposed wedding day, when she received a 
telegram that the fiance met with an accident in Chicago. 
She went to Chicago, bought a corpse and brought the dead 
body of her imaginary lover: it was the only way in which 
she could terminate the fancy. 

I have known also personally the case of a young lady 
who would become seriously depressed and ill every time she 
heard of an engagement or some love-affair among the girls 
of her acquaintance. On a number of occasions she would 
actually go to the length of writing to the prospective groom 
informing him as matters of fact what she merely spun in 
her imagination. She would tell the young man, for instance, 
that his fiancee had been living with another man for such 
and such a time; she would give details such as the city 
in which the woman lived and the name under which she 
went. Of course she caused a good deal of mischief. In 
one such case, a young lady estranged fifteen couples, in- 
cluding her own sister. She always managed to secure data 



FAIRY TALES 303 

which could be corroborated. Of course, when a man is 
jealous all he needs is the slightest suspicion to build up a 
powerful case. 

Another pernicious result of fairy stories is that they lay 
the foundation for compulsive symptoms of obsessions. As 
you know, everything in fairy stories is done by threes, and 
I have seen many people who carried along this superstition 
with them through their lives. Thus my attention has re- 
cently been drawn to the case of a mine inspector who began 
to talk of things in multiples of three. He would get out 
600 tons a day, 300 mine cars and 12 railroad cars; one day 
he told the shipping clerk that the mine would get out 900 
tons, whereas it only put out the usual 500 tons. He applied, 
for instance, for three more motors and thirty new trans- 
portation men, he insisted that the mine was good for 600 
mine cars a day and that in three weeks it would be the best 
mine in the state. This compulsive thinking in threes was 
carried over also to his home life. When his wife became 
pregnant, for example, he was sure she would have three 
children. Analysis showed definitely that the obsession went 
back directly to the influence of fairy tales. 

I have reported the following dream of a woman: "She 
saw three long neck bottles. One was almost broken to 
pieces, the second cracked and the third contained sparkling 
champagne." The dreamer was a widow of 42 years of age, 
who informed me that as far back as she remembers all her 
important affairs in life went by threes. Before her mar- 
riage she acted toward her suitors in the same way: she 
never expected very much of the first, regarded with greater 
favor the second, and expected to marry the third. Her 
husband had to propose three times before she would marry 
him. If she accidentally broke a dish, for instance, she had 
no rest until she broke two more, so that she accordingly 
always had on hand some discarded bottles which served that 



3o 4 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

purpose. In the light of her obsession the significance of 
the dream is evident. The three long necked bottles are 
symbolic of men. Her dead husband is represented by the 
broken bottle, the man who was her lover for years after her 
husband's death is represented by the cracked bottle, while 
the third one containing sparkling champagne is meant to 
represent the man who was paying her attention at the time 
of the dream. The champagne in the bottle is doubly de- 
termined; it symbolizes the quality of the man and is an 
allusion to alcoholism to which they were both addicted. 
Analysis revealed that this number-three ceremonial was 
determined by the fairy stories she used to hear and read 
since childhood, especially the following one which she 
consciously took as a model. It is the story of a princess 
whom her father had placed in a castle on top of a steep 
glass mountain. The knight who succeeded in reaching the 
top on his horse was to receive her in marriage. The young- 
est of three brothers finally reached the top of the mountain 
in the third attempt and married the princess. 

Fairy tales are also very harmful to the normal psychic 
development because they are primitive and archaic modes 
of expression; and catering as they do, to the primitive im- 
pulse, they encourage primitive modes of thought and action 
in the individual. Upon analysis we find that they all prac- 
tically fall into the categories that we find when we reduce 
sex to its various components or partial impulses. I have 
drawn your attention already to the components of sadism 
and masochism; there are also other components, such as 
the partial impulse to look, "sexual curiosity," as it is com- 
monly designated, and the partial impulse to touch, both of 
which components we noted in discussing the tendency wit. 
Fairy tales are based upon these partial components, par- 
ticularly upon the sadistic and masochistic impulses. They 
present a state of the most primitive type: the individual 



FAIRY TALES 305 

either kills or is killed, he actually takes delight in producing 
horrors. They thus have the most pernicious influence upon 
the child, for they unfit him for reality by feeding his imagi- 
nation on modes of reaction that are distinctly out of har- 
mony with civilization. 

Mr. N.'s case, which I have reported, may help you to see 
to what a surprising degree the individual may be influenced 
by fairy stories. The patient was considered most peculiar : 
he often carried a revolver with him, he yearned for those 
times when everybody carried the dirk and dagger and 
could kill when offended. He was fascinated by wild 
animals, especially the tiger who excited him to a marked 
degree. He spent much time in the menagerie in front of 
the tiger's cage, and when unobserved by the keeper, he 
would tease the animal in order to see him jump and hear 
him roar. ... A fancy which often recurred to him was 
the following: "I am annoyed and angered by some one to 
such an extent that I run wild and bite everybody that comes 
in my way, until I bite my way into some person's body!" 

Very soon after entering into the patient's psychic de- 
velopment I noticed that his symptoms were largely deter- 
mined by fairy stories, fables, and myths. Thus, his sadism 
and other symptoms unmistakably showed an archaic setting. 
The associations to almost all his dreams showed how all his 
inner environments corresponded more to a world as de- 
scribed by Andersen, Grimm, Lang and others than to our 
present times. The following dream fragment with its as- 
sociations will show this : 

"On Fifth Ave. with a crowd of people looking at a tiger. 
Whenever the animal comes my way I fly up to the roof 
of a neighboring house." Associations : Flying recalled that 
as a child he often entertained many wishes to fly above the 
clouds, among the stars and planets. This recalled his 
insatiable interest in astronomy at the age of seven to eight 



306 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

years. At about the same period or even earlier he was 
keenly interested in trees ; he was very eager to know where 
the sap came from. The association then took him back to 
a still earlier period of his life when he was interested in the 
bodily functions and in childbirth. After he had been told 
that children grew in the mother, he decided that they must 
come out like a passage of the bowels. This caused him to 
take special interest in the openings of the body, such as the 
mouth, nose and anus. The interest in mysterious openings 
was later projected to the outer world, so that he was strongly 
attracted to caves. This unusual interest was facilitated 
by many fairy stories, especially the ones concerning the 
twelve princes who were called, One, Two, Three, Four, etc., 
to Twelve, who went down to the bowels of the earth and 
then became rabbits and burrowed their way up. From very 
early childhood the patient imagined himself flying and 
beheading monsters above the clouds, or penetrating to the 
center of the earth in the form of some wicked magician, all 
the time passing through the most harrowing scenes. By a 
process of condensation he fused ancient characters and 
episodes with persons and actions of reality, but all his 
fancies usually began with some god or demon-like myth 
and gradually descended to human beings. 

As I went deeper and deeper into the analysis I became 
more and more impressed with the fact that all his associa- 
tions were explained by some fairy tale or myth. Thus the 
flying was not only determined by flying fancies but recalled 
also the story of Perseus, who undertook an expedition 
against the Islands of the Gorgons. 

There is no denying that this is a unique case; but, al- 
though I have not seen another psychoneurotic with such a 
pronounced archaic make-up, I have, nevertheless, observed 
many persons who showed the same mechanisms in a lesser 
degree. I have reported numerous cases that very clearly 



FAIRY TALES 307 

show the direct harmful effects of sadistic and masochistic 
reading material in childhood. Wanke justly asks: "Of 
what benefit is it for the child to read fairy stories where 
there is so much about murder and killing, and where human 
life is treated in the most careless manner as if it amounted 
to nothing? What does the child gain by reading about 
criminal acts which bring no serious consequences on the 
person perpetrating them ?" 

Moreover, even those individuals who do not continue 
with the primitive impulses as far as sex is concerned, who 
show no algolagnia, remain bad dreamers all their life time, 
believing in the unreality of life, unable to appreciate the 
real value of hard work and persistent effort. Having been 
imbued in childhood with the omnipotence of the fairy book 
heroes, they wish to be like them, and later refuse, or find it 
difficult, to become plain citizens struggling for existence. 
Such individuals are constantly wishing for the unattainable 
that could only be gotten through some of the charms of 
fairyland, such as magic boots, invisible caps, Aladdin's 
Lamp, and so on. It is, therefore, no wonder that such 
persons are unhappy as adults and think themselves out of 
place among ordinary mortals. 

That such an attitude of detachment from the actual facts 
of life is in conflict with the requirements of life and militates 
against success is not hard to see. No man has ever accom- 
plished anything in life who was not a man of action. This 
holds true of all fields of endeavor, even of art and literature. 
Unless the artist or poet is no mere dreamer, he can hope 
to produce very little. Marshal Foch in his "Strategy of 
the War" sums up the situation very well when he says, 
"You can understand that when a man of ordinary capacity 
concentrates all his thoughts and studies upon a single object, 
and labors unceasingly to accomplish it, he stands a chance 
for success. Certain conditions are essential in order to be 



308 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

a force in the world. A man must be objective and not 
subjective. A man of action must not waste time in dreams. 
Only facts count; you must stick to facts." And so every 
man who has made his mark in the world has had to learn 
to cope with facts, to meet reality face to face. The sooner, 
therefore, our boys and girls are freed from the influence of 
fairy tales the better. As for the fear expressed by some 
people that abolishing fairy tales will stifle and impoverish 
the imagination, let us remember that there is plenty of 
material for the imagination in nature and life with which 
the child can actually come in contact and from which he 
can derive wholesome pleasure and instruction at the same 
time. 

From what we have seen of fairy tales we may say that 
they represent essentially distorted fancies emanating from 
archaic modes of thinking. The child with its infantile 
wishes and desires runs riot, as it were, in the realm of 
reality. Because it has not as yet learned to value the facts 
of time, space, and mortality, it operates with invisible caps, 
magic horses and other phantastic creations. As the indi- 
vidual grows older, however, reality becomes more burden- 
some and forces him to repress those archaic mechanisms. 
He then realizes that only through reality can he attain his 
wishes and desires, and sublimates those primitive impulses 
through the various forms of occupations which 
pro- we shall discuss later. Here, I merely wish to 

cms to^h more or less briefly upon a form of sublima- 
tion as found in the so-called artistic productions. 

Every child is an artist in the making. When our little 
girl drew the picture of the little cart when she found she 
could not actually possess the desired toy, she made her first 
debut into the artistic world. In this simple illustration we 
see at once the purpose that art fulfills : by its means one is 



FAIRY TALES 309 

able to realize his inner strivings and desires. Similarly, 
when a premature thawing of the snow prevents a little girl 
from trying out her new sled, thus depriving her of her 
keenly expected pleasure, she produces a picture of children 
coasting and frolicking on the new fallen snow, which is 
declared by artists to be a fine artistic production. The draw- 
ing represented the desired condition and thus fulfilled the 
little girl's wish. Similarly, we may say that Pygmalion was 
in love with Galatea long before he fashioned her out of 
ivory and that it was the impulse to possess Galatea that 
caused the talented Pygmalion to chisel her out of ivory. 
The wish is father to the artistic production, and we may 
say that every artist is, as it were, a Pygmalion. In brief, 
the artistic production, like the dream and the symptom is 
a wish fulfillment emanating from unconscious sources. By 
virtue of his talent the artist can embody on canvas, or in 
relief or in sound those unattainable urgings which the 
average individual experiences also but is able to express 
only through the medium of dreams, day-dreams, fancies 
and lies. It is well known also that what we would consider 
impossibilities verging on the infantile or on insanity have 
been put into operation by individuals who were able to 
do so. For example, Nero's Golden Statue is an attempt 
at his personal deification, and it is significant that Alexander 
the Great was seriously thinking of making a statue of his 
own person out of the whole of Mount Athos. 

As we tried to point out on another occasion, the difference 
between the artistic production and the other modes of wish 
fulfillment such as dreams, symptoms, lies, etc., may be said 
to lie in the fact that the latter are purely personal expres- 
sions having no interest whatsoever for the outside world, 
whereas the artistic production has a distinct social character 
and offers a source of pleasure and gratification to artist and 
audience alike. The symptom or dream is a distinct personal 



3 io PSYCHOANALYSIS 

outlet, but through the artistic production the audience be- 
comes identified with the artist, as it were, and partakes of 
the original source of gratification. 

Our conception of the artistic production as an expression 
of inner strivings and wishes is not altogether new, for we 
find it expressed in one form or another in ancient and 
modern literature alike. Thus, we at once think of Aristotle's 
famous theory of poetry and drama as a form of catharsis. 
In modern times, we have a noted representative of this same 
view in Goethe, who, as Pater says, "escaped from the stress 
of sentiments too strong for him, by making a book about 
them." The great poet's "Werthers Leiden" illustrates the 
point. 

It is significant that even individuals who show no artistic 
talent in daily life suddenly display remarkable ability in 
such directions when they become insane. I have in my 
possession a remarkable collection of artistic creations in 
painting, sculpture and belles-lettres produced by individuals 
who were never known to possess any artistic talent and who, 
as far as I could investigate, never made any attempt to 
express themselves artistically. Thus I can mention a 
grocer who, in his insanity, wrote erotic poetry of consid- 
erable merit, and a cook who, in the same condition, produced 
embroideries which a number of artists, upon careful exami- 
nation, pronounced as excellent productions of the Byzantine 
period. To be sure, a great many of the insane productions 
seem meaningless and phantastic on superficial examination, 
but to one acquainted with the patient's history, they are 
full of meaning and significance. The same holds true of 
the best masterpieces: to appreciate them fully it is often 
necessary to have a knowledge of the artist's inner conflicts 
and problems. In this respect, psychoanalytic study is par- 
ticularly helpful, for it reveals to us the hidden sources of 
the artist's influence. Sufficient investigation has been done, 



FAIRY TALES 3" 

for instance, to enable us to say that Leonardo da Vinci's 
characteristic smile which one observes not only in the Mona 
Liza, but also in his Saint Ann, Saint Mary and John the 
Baptist, is in all probability a vague reminiscence of his 
mother's smile. In his interesting little book, on Leonardo 
da Vinci, Prof. Freud has thrown much light on the great 
artist's inner life and problems and those of you who are 
interested in the relation the great painter's work bears to 
his mother's influence, would do well to read it. This inti- 
mate relationship that we observe in this particular case 
between the artist's life and work is seen also in sculpture 
and belles-lettres. Some striking examples of this are "David 
Copperfield," which is a picture of Dickens' own life, 
Goethe's "Werthers Leiden," which describes some of the 
emotional difficulties experienced by the young author him- 
self, etc. 

But the difference between the insane and the sane pro- 
duction lies in the fact that most of the insane productions 
are expressions of desires which are distinctly egocentric. 
It is for that reason that the average person sees very little 
meaning in them. He is unable to put himself in rapport 
with them, as it were. On the other hand, when we look 
at a masterpiece made by an artist, we experience a definite 
feeling of esthetic pleasure. There is something familiar 
in the piece of sculpture, or painting or literary work which 
touches our own experiences. It seems that every great work 
of art has a universal appeal, and that is why perhaps the 
great masters, like Shakespeare, have no limited audience, 
but are enjoyed to a greater or less degree, depending on 
the individual, by all classes of people. In other words, we 
may say that the insane production is usually autoerotic, it is 
of a self-sufficient, self -satisfying, or infantile character, 
while the artistic production belongs mostly to object libido. 



312 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

The artist projects into the outer world certain feelings and 
emotions which deal with object-love. 

It is on this basis of autoerotism and object libido that we 
may explain why most people see nothing artistic in so-called 
modern art. For some reason or other, the latter productions 
belong to autoeroticism. That is why they seem to most 
people to be nothing short of insane productions, and as a 
matter of fact it is often impossible to distinguish one from 
the other. There is no doubt that if we were to compare 
side by side some characteristic poem of a representative 
iltra-modern poet with the verse of some insane patient, 
we would at once be struck by the marked degree of sim- 
ilarity between them. It is thus only by seeing the catalogue 
that we can know that this particular ultra-modern picture 
represents a nude descending the staircase, or this one New 
York, or another a Spanish village. No stretch of the 
imagination could reveal to one what the artist actually meant 
to express. Information obtained from the artist himself 
fully corroborates this view. As one of their spokesmen 
said, he did not care whether his picture meant anything 
to the spectator, it represented a source of gratification to 
him and that was all that he was trying to attain. In other 
words, the work was the expression of an artist, but not an 
artistic expression in the strict sense. 

We may thus lay it down as a general principle that all 
expressions, whether normal or abnormal, as symptoms, 
dreams, witticisms, fairy tales and artistic productions, may 
be classified as infantile or adult, or as autoerotic or object 
libido. Inherently, there is very little difference as far as 
the individual is concerned, but conceived socially, we may 
say that only those productions that have meaning and affect 
to others besides the artist or producer himself may be con- 
sidered normal. 



CHAPTER XIII 
SELECTIONS OF VOCATIONS 

In the previous chapter I tried to make clear to you that 
the reason why I object to certain types of fairy tales is 
because fairy tales are offshoots of archaic thinking originat- 
ing in antiquity, and because they are products of uncon- 
scious wishes symbolically representing those primitive im- 
pulses which the cultured being must learn to repress and 
sublimate in order to fit himself for modern life. 1 Progres- 
sive civilization depends on the harnessing and controlling of 
the forces of nature as well as the forces of the individual, 
and in directing these forces into useful channels. A fairy 
tale, or a story that stimulates any of the partial impulses 
or components of sex in children, may impede or arrest the 
normal control of the individual's energy. Sooner or later 
every normal human being must give up many of his natural 
prerogatives and become part of the society he lives in. He 
must renounce many of his individual desires and must exert 
continuous effort for the common weal. That is, every in- 
dividual must contribute something to the society he lives 
in by adding something useful to it. We may designate such 
contributions as work. 

In the progressive development of culture this mode of 
activity became more and more complex. At first there were 
almost as many vocations as men, but as time went on it 
was found necessary that many persons perform the same 

1 Brill : "Psychoanalysis, Its Theories and Applications/' p. 293, W. 
B. Saunders, Philadelphia. 

313 



3H PSYCHOANALYSIS 

kind of work. Instead of one tailor or doctor or musician 
there had to be many tailors, many doctors, and many mu- 
sicians. In other words, every individual has been allowed 
by society to live through some of the pleasure principles, 
but he has been forced to adapt himself to the principles of 
reality. From our psychoanalytic knowledge we recognize 
this process as sublimation. Every activity or vocation not 
directed to sex in the broadest sense, no matter under what 
guise, is a form of sublimation. 

Now, is the form of sublimation followed by the individual 
a matter of accident; in other words, is the selection of 
vocation a matter of chance, or is it governed by definite 
laws? The average person seems to consider the selection 
of a vocation accidental or at least something that is quite 
impersonal. He usually assumes that given certain qualifi- 
cations, physical or mental, or both, a person could undertake 
any kind of work or vocation. This view is evidently held 
by parents who usually think they are best qualified to select 
their children's vocation, and by professional vocational 
guides who have reduced it all to a sort of mathematical 
formula. They examine the person, discover some of his 
attributes, and then feel presumptuous enough to tell him 
what he is fitted for. Such procedure may be good enough 
for defective persons whose power of sublimation is poor in 
any case and whom a certain amount of suggestion can in- 
fluence at least for a time. But does a normal person need 
such advice and does such advice help him? Investigation 
shows that the normal individual needs no advice or sug- 
gestion in the selection of a vocation, he usually senses best 
what activity to follow, and, what is more, he is invariably 
harmed if advice is thrust upon him by a person of authority. 
For it is known that all our actions are psychically deter- 
mined by unconscious motives, that there is no psychic ac- 
tivity which does not follow definite paths formed in the 



SELECTIONS OF VOCATIONS 315 

individual since his childhood, and as work or profession is 
nothing but a sublimating process in the service of hunger 
and love we may assume that it also must be guided by the 
individual's unconscious motives. Investigation has con- 
vinced me of the truth of these assumptions. 

When we ask a person why he follows a certain vocation 
he usually answers that he does not know, that he just 
drifted into it accidentally. Occasionally he answers that 
his grandfather and his father performed the same line of 
work and that he followed it. On applying the psycho- 
analytic method, however, one usually finds some hidden 
reasons for the particular activity. For years I had investi- 
gated in this manner among patients, friends and strangers, 
and though my findings are not complete I feel that I can 
furnish a preliminary report. 

The motives which actuate one to take up a certain voca- 
tion vary with the person, that is, every vocation is indi- 
vidually determined. My first investigation naturally began 
with physicians. I asked of my confreres why they took up 
the practice of medicine as a vocation and from the many 
answers obtained I shall mention some. 

Dr. W. stated that since his early childhood he had been 
surrounded with doctors who were endeavoring to cure him 
of a paralyzed limb, the effects of infantile paralysis, and as 
they could not help him he decided to become a physician 
and cure himself. 

Dr. A. recalled that as a child he suffered from boils or 
carbuncles and was taken to the doctor by his father. The 
doctor was very brutal to him, and very inconsiderate and 
almost insulting to his poor father. As a child he could 
not understand his father's humility in the presence of the 
brutal doctor, as his father's behavior was quite different in 
his own home. This impression remained permanently fixed 
on his mind. Whenever he was punished by his father he 



3i6 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

thought of the doctor before whom his father trembled, and 
as a small boy he secretly wished he were a doctor. When 
he became of age he realized his wish. 

Dr. B. had no idea why he chose medicine as his profes- 
sion, but finally recalled a scene from his early childhood. 
He overheard a conversation between his mother and an- 
other woman ; the latter looking at him asked his mother the 
month of his birth, and when told that it was the month of 
October she dryly remarked, "Poor boy, he will be either a 
doctor, a butcher, or a murderer. He will have to shed 
blood." As he did not care to adopt the last two vocations, 
he became a physician. 

Dr. C. told me that as a boy he lived near a slaughter 
house, and often witnessed the killing and skinning of 
animals, which greatly fascinated him. Since the age of 
eight years he had not seen the slaughter house, and these 
scenes entirely vanished from his mind, but when at the age 
of sixteen the teacher of physiology demonstrated the circu- 
lation of the blood in the frog he became very interested and 
decided to study medicine. 

Dr. D. was the son of a horse dealer who was also inter- 
ested in veterinary surgery. His father urged him to become 
a veterinary surgeon, which he set out to do, but changed 
later to human beings. 

Dr. E. was the son of a butcher whose ambition it was 
that the son should follow his vocation. The latter, however, 
insisted upon studying medicine and became a learned 
anatomist. 

In all these cases the sado-masochistic components were 
first accentuated — in Dr. W. through his own suffering, and 
in the others through early impressions — and later sublimated 
in the profession. 

The woman who associated the doctor (surgeon) with the 
butcher and murderer was not so far from the mark. All 



SELECTIONS OF VOCATIONS 317 

these activities are based on the sado-masochistic components, 
it is only a question of adjustment. The surgeon and the 
butcher have both conquered their sadistic impulses and 
sublimate the same for useful purposes. The former repre- 
senting a higher state of mental evolution becomes a direct 
savior of human beings, while the latter, not so much en- 
dowed mentally or perhaps having lacked the opportunities 
for further mental development, still helps mankind by 
butchering the animals which furnish its meat supply. 

The professions of prize fighters, wrestlers, bull-fighters, 
warriors, and mighty hunters are direct descendants of pure 
sadism, and the need for the sadistic outlet is well shown by 
the popularity of these vocations. Those who witness a prize 
fight soon observe that the whole audience, and particularly 
the votaries of the manly art, actually participate in the fight. 
One of my patients told me that whenever he goes to a prize 
fight he has to sit apart from every one, for when the prize 
fighter, who is his favorite, strikes he has to imitate him. 
He got himself into trouble many a time for hitting his 
neighbors, he simply could not control himself, and to avoid 
this he has to sit away from the other spectators. Others 
do not actually strike their neighbors but they shout, yell, 
and mimic the actors; in other words, they identify them- 
selves with the fighter and in this way give vent to their 
own sadistic feelings. 

Some of the mechanisms are quite different, thus I know 
three physicians who selected this profession because as 
children they were jealous of the family doctor, who, they 
imagined, stood in greater favor with their mothers than 
their own fathers. Quite a number of the sons of my lady 
patients whom I treated successfully have announced their 
intention to study medicine and take up my specialty. There 
is a tendency on the part of the sons to rival their fathers or 
any other man whom their mother admires. The last 



318 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

mechanism is also observed in other vocations. I know two 
sons who became real estate agents in order to outdo the 
man with whom their mother was in love. 

The profession of law is often taken up as a reaction to 
a dishonest act committed in childhood or early boyhood by 
oneself, by parents, or by some immediate member of the 
family, as brother or sister. Such persons are usually 
scrupulously honest lawyers and judges, as unconsciously 
they always feel that they are suspected and that they have 
something to atone for. Quite often it is an unconscious 
effort to obtain justice for oneself as a result of an injustice 
experienced in childhood. 

Mr. C, a very prominent jurist, had no idea why he took 
up the study of law, but examination revealed the following 
facts: He was brought up in a religious New England at- 
mosphere. His mother was rather nervous, and kept her 
husband and children in a very repressive state. The May- 
flower spirit hovered over everything. She particularly 
objected to smoking, and for years quarreled with her hus- 
band about it, until he was forced to give up this luxury. 
Her two boys were constantly subjected to all sorts of re- 
strictions. One day, while waiting with other children in 
the dressing room of a dancing school, they noticed a burning 
cigarette left by the dancing master. The older brother, 
noticing the burning cigarette, which stood for one of the 
strongest taboos in his home, conceived the temptation to 
violate it, and not having the courage to do it himself, he 
turned to his younger brother and said, "Charles, I dare 
you to take a puff from the cigarette." "I will take one if 
you will," answered Charles, and on being assured that the 
older brother would follow him in this transgression, he 
bravely inserted the cigarette into his mouth and took the 
puff. His older brother thereupon lost his courage and re- 
fused to follow suit. And what was more, in order to atone 



SELECTIONS OF VOCATIONS 319 

for his evil thought, he told his parents of what Charles 
was guilty. One can hardly picture the fear, remorse, morti- 
fication, and last, but not least, the sense of injustice ex- 
perienced by the little boy when he was denounced by his 
parents. The mother was terrified at the son's crime, and 
called him to account for it. Charles experienced a d®uble 
feeling; to confess would be facing his mother's terrible 
wrath, and to lie would be facing the wrath of heaven. He 
chose the latter and stoutly denied his guilt. To settle the 
matter the parents asked him whether he would take an oath 
on the Bible that he did not commit the crime. Charles 
hesitated just a few seconds and then stood ready to take 
the oath. It seems that the parents suspected that he was 
guilty, or they feared to use the holy Bible in vain, so that 
instead of bringing in the holy book they brought in the 
Bible stories, upon which Charles swore that he did not take 
the puff. The parents probably soon forgot the episode, but 
Charles retained an everlasting impression of it. For a long 
time he felt like a person guilty of an enormous crime against 
God and his parents, and constantly anticipated some terrible 
retribution ; on the other hand, he felt that a great injustice 
was done to him by his brother, who first inveigled him into 
committing this evil act, and then betrayed him. In time this 
episode was forgotten, but the small boy became thoughtful 
and serious minded ; as he grew older he became a champion 
of oppressed classmates and gradually decided to become a 
judge. When he graduated from college he took up the 
study of law and realized his wish. 

What was just enumerated was discovered during the 
analysis of a stereotyped dream which appeared on two oc- 
casions while the dreamer was under an anesthetic, the second 
time after an interval of twenty years. The dreamer 
imagined that it was the Day of Judgment, and that he stood 
before God, who asked him questions; although he knew 



320 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

the answers he refused to give them and was jeered by the 
multitude. God in the dream was his father, and being 
examined on the Day of Judgment referred to the episode 
just related. The father in the dream as well as in daily 
life is often substituted by the Governor, the Mayor, and 
by God himself. 1 Mr. C., who is now about fifty-five years 
old, had no conscious knowledge of the cigarette episode and 
the part it played in his life until his dream was analyzed. 
When he finished his story I remarked that there was one 
other vocation that he might have taken up, the ministry, 
because in my experience this vocation is often followed by 
persons who unconsciously feel remorse for some crime 
committed in childhood or as a reaction to temptations in 
later life. He confirmed my statement by telling me that he 
was in doubt as to which of the two vocations to take up, 
and if it were not for the fact that his religious feelings 
underwent a great change during his college years he would 
have become a minister of the gospel. He was undecided 
about it until he graduated from college — it was always a 
question between the ministry or the law. 

Unconscious and sometimes conscious feelings of guilt 
and remorse as a reaction to real or imaginary sins are often 
the basis of theological callings. This mechanism is clearly 
seen in such religious groups as the Salvation Army and 
some Missions. If one attends such religious meetings one 
invariably hears confessions such as, "I was a thief and a low 
sinner until I saw the light of the Lord; two years later I 
was a backslider, but again I found Him," etc. Some of 
the converts fluctuate all the time between heaven and hell. 
Here the maladjustment is so marked that sublimation is 
imperfect or almost impossible ; this accounts for the chronic 
backsliding and the repeated changes from one religion to 

1 Freud: "The Interpretation of Dreams," translated by A. A. 
Brill, The Macmillan Company, New York. 



SELECTIONS OF VOCATIONS 321 

another. Only a few months ago the daily press reported 
the case of a clergyman who changed for the third time from 
one denomination to another. 

I know a similar case of a man who fluctuates between 
fervent Evangelism and extreme Atheism. He is a morbidly 
religious person who is making desperate efforts to adjust 
himself, and depending on the reaction of the time he either 
preaches the gospel or the non-existence of God. I was 
also impressed by the number of dissatisfied and struggling 
homosexuals who follow religious callings. 

Sublimation of infantile exhibitionism x often impels one 
to follow the stage, the army, or the vocation of life saver. 
The actor and the professional soldier are sublimated exhi- 
bitionists par excellence; the latter is also unconsciously 
dominated by a strong aggressive component. The aggres- 
sive component which under certain conditions changes to 
sadism is found in the sexuality of most men. "It is a 
propensity to subdue, the biological significance of which 
lies in the necessity of overcoming the resistance of the sexual 
object by actions other than mere courting." 2 This com- 
ponent is seen throughout life in its sublimated form, one 
notes it in the aggressive business man, in the lawyer, in 
the satirical speaker and in its accentuated form in the 
soldier. Among the first games of boys one invariably finds 
the playing of soldier, and the need for such outlets is readily 
seen in the popularity of the Boy Scout movement, and the 
admiration that has been bestowed on soldiers from time 
immemorial. 

Acting also belongs to the earliest games of children. In 
fact, most playing of children is acting. It is known that a 
great many nervous people are good actors ; they are natural 

* Freud: "Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex," p. 53 
Monograph Series, Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases Pub. 
Co. 

2 Ibid., p. 22. 



322 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

actors. Hysterical persons can imitate almost anything; 
they are the best tragedians as well as the best comedians. 
And if we consider the nature and mechanism, namely, the 
inability to adjust or fix properly one's libido, we can readily 
understand the psychology of the actor. The actor utilizes 
this very inferiority as a sublimation. Actors are persons 
who are usually unable to fix properly their libido. Due to 
some unconscious disturbance their emotional transference 
is more or less inhibited, so that they are unable to develop 
fixed characteristics ; they remain more or less infantile and 
are therefore able to identify themselves with the great 
characters they represent on the stage ; they are still mould- 
able, as it were. That accounts for some of the characteristic 
traits of the actor. I refer to the sexual maladjustment as 
evinced in uninhibited morality and marital unsteadiness 
which have been attributed to stage folks in all lands and at 
all ages. To be rigid or at least regular in the sense of fol- 
lowing the dictum of society in one's sex life presupposes a 
well-adjusted and fixed libido. Now I do not wish to imply 
that the actor is to be considered inferior because he mani- 
fests this maladjustment of his love life; on the contrary he 
has the courage to put in operation what the average person 
secretly desires. That is why we admire the actor, and that 
accounts for the popularity of plays which deal with the 
primitive impulses. They offer us a mental catharsis, we 
cry and laugh at the play because we identify ourselves with 
the actor, to wit, with the hounded rogue or ideal hero, 
whom he represents. The actor's identification with the 
stage character is well illustrated by the following story. 
An admirer of the great actor Booth, after witnessing his 
wonderful performance of King Lear, asked the famous 
tragedian to explain the secret of his skillful rendition to this 
character. Booth, turning very abruptly, responded, "Sir, 
I am Lear." 



SELECTIONS OF VOCATIONS 323 

It is due to the same mechanism that only few great actors 
have ever produced original works that could lay claim to 
individuality. They are so used to identify themselves with 
their stage characters that they find no time to develop a 
steady and fixed character of their own. For the character of 
a person is nothing but the sum total of one's past im- 
pressions. 

My own investigation with life savers convinces me that 
most of them take genuine delight in their vocation mainly 
because they love to display their well-developed muscles. 
Professional athletes and "sports" are dominated by the 
same exhibitionistic impulse, most of the latter, however, 
unable to exhibit themselves, gain pleasure by identifying 
themselves with the actors (ball players, fighters, etc.). 

Some of the vocations can be traced to very early infantile 
sexual traits. Thus I know of a maker of optical instru- 
ments, a successful manager of a big camera department, 
and three photographers who were punished in childhood 
for evincing a strong curiosity for sexual looking, and 
although they did not become voyeurs, they all manifested a 
strong tendency for looking. I have reported the case of a 
man who displayed in early childhood a strong perverted 
impulse for odors, 1 who became a successful perfume dealer, 
after he was a failure in two other vocations. Uncon- 
sciously such people take up the vocations that gratify them 
in a sublimated form. The reader need not be surprised 
and shocked merely because some people who are doing 
useful work merged into it through sexual impressions of 
childhood. There is nothing wrong about it. Some of the 
most sublime institutions in this world had their origin in sex. 

In analyzing a man who became rich from an invention, 
or rather an improvement of patterns for ladies' apparel, 
I found the following facts : He was brought up in a small 
'Brill, Loc. cit. f p. 135. 



3 2 4 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

settlement in very poor surroundings. His father was un- 
ambitious, apparently not a very strong character, while his 
mother, to whom he was very much attached, was a very 
hard working woman who had a constant struggle to keep 
the wolf from the door. She was rarely able to save enough 
money to buy new clothes for the children and herself, and 
as a little boy he was often moved to tears when she bewailed 
her sad lot. It was the strong wish to grow up and work for 
his mother which later guided him unconsciously to occupy 
himself so assiduously with things relating to women's ap- 
parel through which he made a fortune. 

Some selections of professions are quite puzzling. One 
wonders why some people take up the heavy brass instru- 
ments or the bass-drum in music. For the information of 
some it may be said that the players on these instruments 
usually have as much knowledge of music as any member of 
the band. One might therefore ask why they prefer instru- 
ments that can be used only in conjunction with a band and 
which offer little if any outlet in any other way. I have not 
had the opportunity to study many such people, so that I am 
not offering anything conclusive. I know two drum players 
and two saxhorn players. 

Mr. T., a drummer in an orchestra, told me that as a little 
boy of 4, 5, or 6 years he was very anxious to have a drum ; 
the neighbor's boy received one for Christmas and he begged 
his father for one and cried for it, but the latter either did 
not wish to buy it for him or was perhaps too poor to do so. 
One evening the neighbor's door was open and no one 
seemed to be home; he walked quietly into the house and 
stole the drum. He hid it for a while, but as he could not 
resist the temptation to beat on it he was soon caught with 
the goods. The punishment was severe and produced a 
very strong impression. At the age of seventeen years he 
began to study the violin, and a few years later he joined 



SELECTIONS OF VOCATIONS 325 

an amateur orchestra, playing second violin. A vacancy 
for the drummer's place then occurred and he volunteered 
to fill it. In a very short time he became such an accom- 
plished player on this instrument that he obtained a lucrative 
position in a big orchestra. 

Mr. X., the other kettle drum player, was very fond of 
music and studied it for years. He, too, volunteered to take 
the position of drummer in a band and has played on this 
instrument ever since. Mr. X. came to me for treatment 
because of bashfulness. He had always been a very seclusive 
and reserved person afraid to speak to people. It was 
impossible for him to put himself en rapport with anybody. 
He became tongue-tied whenever he came in contact with 
people, men or women. When he first came to this city 
he refused to live in a boarding house because he was afraid 
he would have to sit at the same table with people who 
might talk to him. Before taking up music as a profession 
he lost his position in an office because he was unable to 
talk to the manager of his department. Here the drum fits 
in well with his nature; the drum is not an instrument that 
talks along fluently with the other instruments, as, e.g., the 
violin or clarinet ; though it is a part of the band it is never- 
theless more or less aloof in its behavior and it can always 
be heard when it speaks. In the case of Mr. X. it served 
as a compensation for his enforced quietude. 

The players on the heavy brass instruments showed similar 
mechanisms to the one found in X. One observes that 
people playing on drums, basses, or heavy brass instruments 
are not of the same type as those who play the first violin, 
and are altogether different in makeup from those who lead 
the band. They are often people who for some reason or 
other must stand away from the crowd, who are not very 
good "mixers," but would like to be. 

I have spoken to a number of people who were rubbers 



326 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

in Turkish baths. I found that in some cases the vocation 
went back to the infantile desire for touching, in others it 
was distinctly pathological, and still others have taken up 
this vocation because it alleviates their own physical ailments. 
I have in mind one man who has been a "rubber" for about 
twenty years. He told me that he suffered from rheumatism 
and was told that Turkish baths would help him ; as his aches 
diminished through the baths he decided to take up some 
occupation in the baths and became a rubber. 

A few street cleaners have also been examined. Some 
were seen by me, and a few by former patients who kindly 
volunteered to assist me. There seem to be two types of 
street cleaners, some who are quite old or incapacitated to 
an extent that they are unable to follow their former voca- 
tions, and others select street cleaning as a vocation of 
preference. The latter are usually clean-cut men of about 
35 years and one wonders why they should be attracted to 
street cleaning. Of the few examined, some seemed to have 
retained the infantile coprophilia and, like children, liked 
to wallow in dirt. One of my friends brought me a report 
of a man of about 35 years, a street cleaner, who described 
the difficulties he had to encounter to obtain this position; 
that he had to pass examinations and had to get some 
political influence, etc., etc. This man distinctly stated that 
he "loved" his work because "I love to see the water flush 
the streets and clean them through and through." His whole 
life seemed to be in his work, as he described it. This man 
recalls Boitelle by Maupassant, who "made a specialty of 
undertaking dirty jobs all through the countryside. When- 
ever there was a ditch or a cesspool to be cleaned out, a 
dunghill removed, a sewer cleansed, or any dirt hole what- 
ever, he was always employed to do it." Dr. Karpas, from 
whose interesting paper I am quoting, 1 states : "Boitelle was 

1 Karpas : Freud's Psychology, New York Journal, June 14, 1913. 



SELECTIONS OF VOCATIONS 327 

disappointed in love — he was not allowed to marry a negress 
with whom he was deeply in love. Thus his ungratified 
wish — to marry a negress who was forbidden him by his 
parents and by society — found a substitute in the selection 
of a particular vocation which was likewise dirty and dis- 
agreeable to society." 

One of the street cleaners who came under my observa- 
tion presented almost a similar mechanism. He was an 
able-bodied man of about 40 years who could give no reason 
for selecting this vocation. When asked about it, he said 
it was "as rotten and dirty as any other — what does it matter 
what you do ?" He was an avowed anarchist and took every 
occasion to decry the rottenness of our social system. I 
heard him a few years ago at a public meeting where he 
protested against being forced by the Street Cleaning De- 
partment to march with a dirty broom on his shoulder. He 
was fiery in his denunciation, to the extent of advocating 
violence. I was unable to enter into his intimate life, but 
may we not assume that his vocation was an unconscious 
effort to clean up the rottenness of society which seemed to 
trouble him so much? I have no doubt that had we been 
able to enter into this man's life we would have found be- 
sides some infantile determinant. 

Besides the specific forms of sublimation, as seen in 
special vocations, one also notices certain modes of sublima- 
tion of a more or less general nature. "Only" children and 
first-borns, who, by virtue of their positions in the family, 
become domineering and orncious * usually select the vocation 
requiring leadership, such as teachers, religious and political 
leaders, while the youngest child, who was bullied and 
intimidated by his older brothers, is generally satisfied with 
a subordinate position in life. I have mentioned only very 
few examples of the mechanism of selection of vocation that 
1 Brill, hoc. cit., p. 279. 



328 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

have come under my observation, but these suffice to show 
the forces that one generally finds behind selected vocations. 
There is always some psychic determinant which laid the 
foundation for the later vocation, and if not interfered with 
the individual is unconsciously guided to express his sublima- 
tion in that particular form. It makes no difference whether 
a man is a financier, preacher, actor, physician, cook, or 
shoemaker, provided he himself has selected this vocation and 
was not forced into it by home environments or social con- 
ditions ; he will find his proper outlet in his work and under 
normal conditions he will never become fatigued by it or 
wearied of it. Most of the failures in life are due to the 
fact that one tries to do what one is unfit for or unwilling 
to accomplish. Incidentally, I wish to say that no one 
ever suffers a nervous breakdown from overwork. Of 
course, I am not referring to breakdown as a result of 
physical factors which are seen among workers in factories 
under unsanitary conditions, but to the so-called nervous 
breakdown as a result of overwork. Strictly speaking, 
these maladies do not exist. When one investigates such 
nervous breakdowns one invariably finds that many of them 
belong to the psychoses; others represent well-developed 
neuroses which were brought to the surface by any of the 
provoking agents one always encounters in such maladies, 
and in still others one finds that the work or vocation was 
always accompanied by severe resistances, and that instead of 
representing a natural outlet it was monotonous drudgery. 
When one takes the history of such persons one finds that 
they were always more or less discontented, that they were 
in constant need of vacations, and were always ailing. Con- 
tented workers have to be forced to take vacations. Vaca- 
tions as commonly understood are neurotic fads which ad- 
justed persons don't want and which are of no benefit to 
those who clamor for them. The fact that most vacations 



SELECTIONS OF VOCATIONS 329 

really cause fatigue shows that their alleged purpose is just 
a blind. The adjusted person works for work's sake — his 
vocation represents a part of his "cosmic urge" and hence he 
is unable to stop. That answers those who are puzzled why- 
some of our multimillionaires continue to work untiringly. 
It is surely not for the love of money, as most think. On 
the other hand, there are cases on record of men who died 
soon after giving up lifelong vocations. 

There are also a great many failures due to the fact that 
people follow certain vocations for which they are mentally 
unfit. Such persons are usually defectives who have not 
enough insight into their own ability and cannot at any time 
sublimate properly; this is clearly seen in their love-life, 
wherein they evince rapid attachments and just as ready de- 
tachments of their libido. They are unable to fix on either 
the love object or vocation; they are pathological flirts. 
The other failures are due to exogenous factors ; not a few 
among those were forced into their vocations by some 
authority, and were then prevented by conscious or uncon- 
scious circumstances from changing to something else. Such 
persons merge in time into a neurosis, which is nothing but 
a manifestation of their inadequate adjustment, and often 
enough forces them to give up their work and take up some- 
thing else. Unconsciously physicians have always sensed this 
mechanism, and for years it was customary to advise nervous 
patients to take up another vocation which they selected for 
them. Such selections were invariably doomed to failure, as 
no person of normal mind, even though neurotic, should be 
advised as to the selection of a vocation. The few attempts 
which I made to advise patients as to what to do invariably 
proved undesirable. 

Miss R., a school teacher, became nervous and had to be 
rolled in a chair for a number of years. After being treated 
for quite a time she finally recovered. She did not wish to 



330 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

return to teaching and I suggested that she take up a certain 
course in the School of Philanthropy at Columbia Univer- 
sity; I felt that that would be the desirable thing under the 
circumstances. She thought it was a splendid idea, and 
acted upon it at once. I did not see her for a few weeks, 
when one day she called upon me at my office. She was in 
tears, and I feared at first that her symptoms reappeared. 
After I calmed her, she began to explain that she hated the 
course; when I asked her why she continued with it, she 
simply argued : "Well, Doctor, you told me to take it." In 
other words, here she was struggling along for weeks, un- 
happy and discontented, because I took it upon myself to 
advise her. She went on to tell me that though she could 
not recover all of her tuition fee, she was quite willing to 
drop the course. When I inquired what she expected to 
do now, she told me that she would like to make lamp 
shades. I assure you that was the last thing that would ever 
occur to me. She has been making lamp shades ever since, 
and I am glad to say, that she is getting along very well. The 
point is that she is happy and loves her work simply because 
it was her own selection. 

I had a similar experience with Mr. S., who was con- 
siderably rich and philanthropic. When he was cured, I 
urged him to enter some occupation, but was at a loss as to 
what to advise him to undertake. Dr. Putnam of Boston 
happened to be in New York at that time and he suggested 
that inasmuch as the patient was charitable and had a regular 
income it would be a capital idea for him to open up an 
office and mete out his charitable donations himself. I 
thought it was a happy suggestion and I imparted it at once 
to Mr. S., who was quite enthusiastic over it. After a few 
weeks, however, he came to me, utterly disgusted, declaring 
impatiently: "I can't do the damned thing; I hate those 
people; I'll give them the money but I don't want to talk 



SELECTIONS OF VOCATIONS 331 

to them." When I asked him what he would like to do, I 
learned that he had been thinking of entering the art business 
which, he said, he loved and had been interested in for years. 
I discussed the plan with him and the only counsel I gave 
him was to go into partnership with a person who was fully 
acquainted with the strictly business end of the undertaking. 
He has done very well since then and is now considered a 
connoisseur in his profession. 

As in the selection of a mate, a sensible person needs no 
advice and wants none, and fools will fail in spite of the best 
guidance, for we can only do well those things that we do 
with our hearts, with our whole souls. The people who 
themselves selected their vocations, whose cases I cited, were 
successful in their various callings, because their vocations 
supplemented or substituted their primitive components. 
The German expression, "Arbeit macht das Leben suss," is 
literally true in cases where the work represents an outlet 
for the individual. This is true of all vocations. Those of 
you who have lived abroad and frequented the less preten- 
tious restaurants remember how proud a French or Italian 
cook is of his or her special dish, and how pleased the host 
is when his guest enjoys his meal. One can see they derive 
genuine pleasure from their work. I feel that the restlessness 
and dissatisfaction among our working classes, which often 
results in strikes, is not altogether due to the causes generally 
attributed to them. It is not so much a question of money 
as of emotion. Owing to the many inventions which have 
gradually transformed manual labor into machine work, the 
laborer no longer finds the same interest in his work. The 
shoemaker no longer makes a shoe, but as a hand in the 
shoe factory he constantly performs one simple thing which 
is of no interest to him and which soon becomes drudgery. 
When one compares this factory worker to the shoemaker of 
yore who took the measurements, selected the leather, and 



332 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

then put his whole personality into the making of the shoe, 
one can understand why the latter, as we still find him in 
some parts of Europe, is a much happier man. 

On the other hand, I have seen many perfectly normal 
people who were failures in life simply because they were 
not allowed to follow their own inclinations. Instead of 
being prepared for life in general, their parents felt it 
necessary to accompany and guide them through every detail. 
Some of them struggled for 20 and 30 years with vocations 
which their fathers imposed upon them and stopped being 
failures only after their fathers' death, when they took up 
something which they really liked. 

Thus I have known a man whose father compelled him 
to study music, despite his resistances. When he completed 
an excellent education in music in this country, he was sent 
to Berlin. The teacher declared that he possessed technique 
but lacked warmth and emotion. The father was obdurate, 
and insisted that the young man continue his studies. When 
the son reached the age of twenty-six, however, he took a 
full breath, as it were, and dropped music; thereafter he 
turned from one vocation to another, only to be compelled 
to return to music in every case. He continued to do this 
until his father died, when he entered the insurance business, 
in which he is now doing excellently. 

Likewise, much harm is often done by parents who take 
it upon themselves to decide the child's future career. I 
have seen a boy of about ten or eleven years old, brought to 
me by his father who considered him incorrigible. He in- 
formed me that the boy refused to do what he was told, took 
absolutely no interest in his studies and flatly insisted on not 
going to school. I examined the boy and found that he was 
mentally perfectly normal. When I asked him why he did 
not wish to study, he said, "Well, I don't want to be a 
lawyer." "And what would you like to be?" "Oh, well," 



SELECTIONS OF VOCATIONS 333 

he quickly replied, "I would like to raise strawberries." 
When he was in the country, the gardener had told him that 
there was a good deal of money in raising strawberries ; what 
was more, he liked strawberries exceedingly, and so he de- 
cided to make raising strawberries his life work. I assured 
him that his father would have no objection to it, but that 
he would first have to learn how to read and write; upon 
which he went on to say that if his father would promise 
him that he may raise strawberries, he would go to school. 
As you may imagine, the father perpetually kept on dinning 
into the poor boy's ears that he would have to be a lawyer ; 
every time the child made some error, he would zealously 
remind him that "he would make a devil of a lawyer." The 
youngster was already sick and tired of the law at the tender 
age of ten; and was it any wonder? I then called in the 
father and after treating him for a little while, I had him 
promise to permit the youngster to raise strawberries in July. 
The boy did very well following this, and when summer 
came he at once set about realizing his ideal. He worked 
with the gardener for half a day, when he grew disgusted and 
decided to drop the profession altogether. He is now at- 
tending college. This boy developed so many resistances to 
his father and his ideas that he retaliated by simply refusing 
to do anything. The parents thought that he was vicious 
and abnormal simply because he revolted against a vocation 
which his father had selected for him from the very begin- 
ning. It is highly advisable, then, that the average normal 
individual be permitted to select his own vocation. 

When we look back upon the field we have surveyed in this 
brief course, we find one fact standing out very prominently. 
It is a highly significant fact and we find it in one 
form or another, in practically every subject that 
we have taken up. Indeed, we may say that it served as a 



334 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

basis for our whole discussion, — the fact that all uncon- 
scious mentation is motivated fundamentally by the wish. 

We began with the symptom and we found that in the final 
analysis it represents the realization of a hidden wish. This 
we observed to hold true not only in the field of the neurosis 
but in the field of the psychosis as well. We saw in the 
very first case that I cited that the hysterical symptom in the 
arm was a compromise between two psychic streams, the 
foreconscious and the unconscious respectively, representing 
the fulfillment of a hidden wish. We noted the patient's 
mental conflict. She could not accept the young man's 
failure to propose as proof that he took no interest in her, 
yet she could not understand why he should not propose. 
We saw T how her state of marked emotional tension was 
brought to a climax when the young man pressed her arm on 
the night before he left, and how it was this emotionally ac- 
centuated incident that she wished to retain in memory. For 
it was then that she expected he would say the long-expected 
word. Analysis revealed that it was this marked mental 
state that became converted into the pain, that the hysterical 
symptom was but a concrete expression of her inner wish. 

We see the same conversion in the psychoses. But here, 
the process is much farther reaching and more violent in re- 
action ; in order to attain his wish, the individual is compelled 
to tear himself away from reality altogether. We tried to 
make this clear by citing several cases. We saw in the in- 
stance of the tailor who had been maltreated by the farmer 
and his sons an attempt at first at a solution of the problem 
through the regular channels of social justice. But when 
this failed, he tore himself away from reality altogether, real- 
izing his desire for redress in his hallucinatory condition. 
We saw a more marked example of the same condition in 
the case of the young woman who developed delusions of 
reference, when she realized that she had lost the man in 



SELECTIONS OF VOCATIONS 335 

whom she was interested. Here, the rationalizing process 
which was quite unconscious, is noteworthy. Forced to the 
conclusion that she lost the man because she was too reserved 
and moral, the patient attempts to readjust herself to the new 
condition by imagining that she really is immoral. "He left 
me because I am immoral :" that is how she realizes her un- 
conscious wish. 

The psychopathological action, — the slip of the tongue, the 
various "little" mistakes we make from day to day, — all fol- 
low the same wish tendency. When the young man wrote 
"maternity" instead of "fraternity," there is no doubt at all 
that he expressed in that way what was uppermost on his 
mind: his ardent wish to enter upon matrimony. The un- 
conscious never lies. When a young woman writes : "From 
now on I am going to be running back home" when she 
should have written : "From now on I am not going to be 
running back home," we may be sure that she w r ishes to re- 
turn, and other things being equal, that she will. This is 
borne out by the facts. The young woman in question was 
experiencing many conflicts in her work as a sales-person for 
a publishing house. The letter in which the above slip oc- 
curred was written directly upon arriving in her field, w 7 hich 
she had left as many as three times, only to return again on 
the persuasion of her field manager. The letter was in- 
tended to assure the manager that she was no longer ex- 
periencing any mental conflicts regarding the work, but her 
mistake showed clearly her real state of mind, for a week 
later actually found her back again home. 

The examples given in our discussion of wit show con- 
clusively the wish motive. This was particularly shown in 
tendency wits where the hostile or sex wishes always show 
themselves. When we come to dreams, the wish motive be- 
comes more and more evident. The latent content of the 
dream invariably expresses a hidden wish. The individual 



336 PSYCHOANALYSIS 

craves for something, but as he cannot attain it in reality, it is 
realized for him in the dream. I am not going to stop to give 
any examples ; the numerous dreams we have cited all show 
the wish tendency very clearly. 

In collections, and in a highly more sublimated form, in 
the selections of vocations also, we have the same wish 
tendency in evidence. Fairy tales, too, as we saw, follow the 
same trend : they are poetic productions containing some wish 
which the individual was unable to realize in reality. And 
finally, all normal and abnormal artistic expression is no ex- 
ception to our rule, for in the final analysis, the artistic pro- 
duction is nothing but a wish compromise, emanating from 
the unconscious mental activity of the individual endowed 
with talent. 



INDEX 



Abreaction 
meaning, 9 
example 14 
Actor, as exhibitionist, 321-323 
Adam and Eve, significance of 

story, 67, 209 
Adjustment, 30, 189, 191 
dependent on home environ- 
ment, 223, 277 
in relation to fairy tales, 296 
in the neurosis and psychosis, 
35, 40 
Aggression, sexual, 129, 130, 132, 

135 
"coprophilic" wit of, 135 
Agoraphobia 43 
Alexander the Great, 309 
Algolagnia, 307 
Ambivalency, of feeling, 222 
Amnesia, posthypnotic, 16 
Andersen, 209, 210, 300, 305 
Animals, identification with, 232- 

240, 243 
Animism, in wit, 122 
Anticipation dream, 174 
Anxiety. (See Fear.) 
Anxiety dreams, 171, 172, 184, 

189, 192-194 
Anxiety hysteria, 42, 43, 177, 182 
Aphasia, 49, 68, 75 
Aretaeus, 2 
Aristotle, 310 
Artificial dreams, 195-200 
Artistic productions, 308-312 
among insane, 310-312 
autoerotism in modern, 311, 

312 
difference between dreams, 

symptoms, etc., and 309, 

310 



Artistic productions 
(continued), 
difference between sane and 

insane, 311, 312 
infantile expression in modern, 

62, 311 
relation to artist's life, 310, 311 
similarity of modern to insane, 

312 
wish in, 308-310, 336 
Athlete as exhibitionist, 323 
Autoerotic love, 189 
in insane artistic productions, 
3ii, 312 
Automatism, in wit, 119, 120 

Bacon, 289 

Barber's pole, significance, 65 

Baudesson, Captain, 88 

Beard, 5 

Beechstein, Ludwig, 299 

Behaviorists, 62 

Bell, Sanford, 70 

Bernheim, 16 

Binet-Simon tests, 63 

Bleuler, 52, 63, 89, 197, 257, 258 

Boitelle, 326 

Booth, 322 

Brahma, 289 

Breuer, 7, 16 

Buddha, 289 

Burroughs, John, 244 

Catatonic (characteristics), 256, 

257 
Cathartic method, 9, 12 
Censor psychic, 225-227, 246 
Charcot, 6, 7 
Charnwood, Lord, 134 
Chavan Narischkin, Countess, 103 
Christmas, 67 



337 



338 



INDEX 



Chronic engagements, psychology 

of, 223 
Civilization, 26, 27, 30, 32, 112, 

127, 130-132, 136, 161, 162, 

186, 187, 266, 313 
Collections, psychology of, 102- 

110, 336 
Comparison, basis of thinking, 

59-64, 68 
Complex, 
meaning 13 

"prostitution complex," 45 
"Complex readiness," 89, 90, 97 

case of, 90, 91 
Components, partial, 128, 129, 

304, 313, 3i6, 317, 321 
Compulsion neurosis, 43 
Concealing memories, 68-75, J 79> 

182 
Condensation, 
in dreams, 117, 125, 170, 224, 

225 
in wit, 115-117 
Confucius, 289, 294 
Conscious, the, conception of, 16, 

225, 226 
Consolation dream, 227, 229 
Continuous association, 18, 19, 

53 
Convenience dream, 149 
Conversion, 12, 334 
Crepuscular state (of sleep), 

140 
Criminal, 
in relation to dreams, 158, 159 
related to liar, 207 
Crown prince, origin of institu- 
tion, 279, 280, 288 



"David Copperfield," 311 

Da Vinci, Leonardo, 219, 220, 

311 
Day dreams, 195 
Death, 

dreams of, 210-217, 221, 222, 

223-226 
significance to child, 210 
Defectives, 19, 26, 27, 62, 190, 

203, 329 



Delusions, 
distinguished from illusions, 39 
of grandeur, 205 
of reference, 45, 266, 334 
of self-accusation, 286 
of transformation, 239 
Dementia praecox, 28, 29, 191, 
253-261, 286 
difference between manic- 
depressive insanity and, 
263 
relation to normal person, 278 
Determinant of dream, 140, 155, 

173, 192-195, 245, 248 
Dickens, Charles, 98, 208, 311 
Diseases, nervous and mental, 
2-7 
difference between nervous and 

mental, 253 
Mental, two entities, 27- 
29 
Displacement, 69, 179, 185 
from below to above, 172 
in dreams, 125 
in wit, 1 1 7- 1 19 
Disraeli, 115 
Distortion, 

in dreams, 154-157, 164, 165, 

226 
in wit, 157 
Dostoyevski, 98 
"Double entendre," 151, 154 
Dream, the, 139-252 

analogous to symptom, 176- 

182, 183 
anticipation, 174 
anxiety, 171, 172 184, 189, 191, 

192 
artificial, 195-200 
as guardian of sleep, 147-151 
condensation in, 117, 125, 170, 

224, 225 
consolation, 227, 229 
convenience, 149 
day dreams, 195 
difference between wit and, 

137, 138 
displacement in, 125 
distortion in, 154-157, 164, 165, 
226 



INDEX 



339 



Dream, the (continued) , 
determinant of, 140, 155, 173, 

192-195, 245, 248 
of death of relatives, 210-217, 

221-226 
egocentric, 213, 249, 252 
manifoldly determined, 240- 

252 
of missing train, 229 
examination, 226, 227 
exhibition, 209, 210 
falling, 230, 231 
flying, 229, 230 
function and motive of, 139- 



Empathic index, 169, 170 
Environment, 21 

in the psychosis, 296 

relation to only child, 279, 296 
Epilepsy, psychic, 53, 54 
Equivalents, psychic, 53, 54 
Erasmus, 289 
Erb, Heinrich, 6 
Ethnic symbols, 65-67, 152 
Examination dream, 226, 227 
Exhibition dream, 209, 210 
Exhibitionism, 128, 129, 321 

in wit, 127 



l8 3 


Fairy tales, 296-308 


identification with animals in, 


as emotional outlet, 300 


232-240, 243 


pernicious influences of, 300- 


in pubescent age, 190, 191 


308, 313 


latent, 177, 178, 181- 183, 247, 


wish in, 296-300, 308, 336 


250, 335 


Falling dream, significance, 230, 


"local," 231, 232 


231 


manifest, 177, 182, 250 


Fear, 43, 184, 185, 188, 189, 192 


CEdipus, 214-217 


of burglars, 101, 102, 185 


"prophetic," 143, 144, 227, 228, 


Fetichism, meaning, 109 


229 


Fixation, upon parent, 217, 281- 


relation to unconscious, 23 


284, 293 


relation to wit, 137 


Flying dream, 229, 230 


representation through oppo- 


"Folies a deux," form of insan- 


site in, 125 


ity, 268 


resemblance between wit and, 


"Folies de dout," 43 


137 


Foch, Marshal, 307 


resolution, 228 


Foreconscious, 15, 16, 40, 225, 


sense in nonsense in , 125 


226, 334 


stimuli, internal and external, 


Forgetting, 


and, 140, 141, 143-146, 155, 


concealing memories, 68-75, 


249 


179, 182 


strata of, 175 


of names, 76-86 


streams of, 246 


psychology of, 49"59, 68-74, 


wish in, 23, 147-150, 153- 


75 


155, 158, 159, 163-167, 171, 


typical case of, 51-59 


184, 102, 193, 199, 210, 211, 


Fortune teller, psychology of, 


226, 228-230, 234, 244-246, 


298 


252, 335, 336 


Freud, Sigmund, 1, 4-9, 14-18, 


Dream book, 140 


20-24, 29, 30, 40, 46, 47, 49, 


Dreamy state (of sleep), 140 


51-53, 56, 69, 71, 76, 86, 98, 


Dressmaking, art of, 210 


no, in, 127, 142, 146, 189, 




209, 214, 215, 287, 311, 320, 


Education, 160, 161, 237 


321 


Ellipsis, in wit, 122 


Froebel, 289 


Emerson, 265 


"Fugue," 54 



340 INDEX 



Galatea, 309 
Galen, 2 
Galileo, 289 
Goethe, 310, 3" 
Government, 136, 137 
Grant, 288 
Grimm, 299, 305 

Hallucination, distinguished from 

illusion, 39 
Handshake, diagnostic point in 

dementia prsecox, 256 
Harmless wit, 126, 133 
Harrison, 288 
Hayes, 288 
Hippocrates, 1 
Hobbies, psychology of, 102-110, 

336 
Homosexual, 321 

dream of, 196 
Horseshoe, origin of symbol, 109 
Hugo, 292 

Humor, sense of, in children, 164 
Hunger, primary impulse, 32, 315 
Hypnotism, 

difference between psychoana- 
lytic method and, 18 

in mental diseases, 6, 7 

in relation to cathartic method, 
89. 
Hysteria, 1 

anxiety, 42, 43, 177, 182 

case of, 7, 8 

crying spells in, 31 

Ibanez, 87 

Identification, 142, 143, 169, 223, 
237, 208, 322, 323 
with animals, 167, 232-240, 243 
Illusion, distinguished from hal- 
lucination and delusion, 39 
Infantile amnesia, 70, 71 
Insanity, 
as emotional outlet, 36, 37, 38 
common forms of, 253, 254- 

278 
dementia praecox, 28, 29, 191, 

253-261, 263, 278, 286 
difference between functional 
and organic, 27 



Insanity (continued), 
insane artistic productions, 

310-312 
manic-depressive insanity, 28, 

29, 177, 261-263 
simulating insanity, 36, 37 
paranoia, 264-278 
Insomnia, causes of, 105 
Intermediary sexual aims, 128 

"Jean Christophe," 85 
Johnson, 288 

Karpas, Doctor, 326 

Kepler, 289 

King David, 135 

King Lear, 322 

Kiselak, first modern advertiser, 

288, 289 
Knight, Richard Payne, 66 
Korsakoff's psychosis, 206 
Kraepelin, 3, 4, 27, 28 

Lang, 305 
Lapses, 
in reading, 97 
in talking, 91, 92, 93-95 
in writing, 88, 89, 95-97 
Last child, relation to only child, 

283, 285, 296 
Latency period, place in child's 

development, 189, 190 
Latent dream, 177, 182, 247, 250, 

335 
Libido, 194 293, 322 
fixation of, 217, 281-284 
for looking and touching, 128, 
323, 325, 326 
Lincoln, Abraham, 134, 135, 169, 

288 
Life-saver, as exhibitionist, 321, 

323 
"Local" dreams, 231, 232 
Locke's "tabula rasa," 20, 71 
Losing symbolic action, 99-101 
"Lothair," 115 
Louise Lateau, case of, 207 
Love (see Sex), instinct of, 32, 

188, 223, 264, 281 

Love-life (see Sex), 329 

adjustment in, 30, 272 



INDEX 



34» 



Love-life (continued), 
as equivalent to sex, 29 
cases of disturbances in, 31, 

33, 34 
Love object, enhancement of, 280 
Luther, Martin, 289 
Lycanthropia, 239 
Lying, psychology of, 200-208 

Madison, 288 
Madonna cult, 219 
Malingerers, 37, 207 
Mania, 
as symptom, 2, 3 
doubting, 43 

in dementia praecox, 28 
in manic-depressive insanity, 
29, 262, 263 
Manic-depressive insanity, 28, 
29, 177 182, 261-263 
difference between dementia 

prsecox and, 263 
in relation to normal person, 
278 
Manifest dream, 177, 182, 250 
Marriage, 136, 137, 280 
Masturbation, 255, 256, 270, 273, 
277 
in relation to dementia praecox, 
255, 256 
"Masculine protest," 235 
Masochism, partial component, 

304 316, 317 
Mather, Cotton, 289 
Maupassant, 153, 326 
Melancholia, 
as symptom, 2, 3 
in dementia praecox, 28 
in manic-depressive insanity, 
29, 262 
Mental diseases, 2-7, 27-29 
distinguished from nervous 
diseases, 253 
Methodicalness, relation to de- 
mentia praecox, 261 
Meyer, Adolph, 3 
Michelangelo, 19 
Miles, 67 

Missing train, dream of, 229 
Mona Lisa, 219, 311 



Morons, 63 

Mother-in-law, psychology, 282, 

283 
Motion, elementary pleasure, 159, 

231 

Napoleon, 169, 170 
Narcistic love, 189 
Nebuchadnezzar, identification 

with animal, 238, 239 
Nero, 294 309 
Nervous diseases, 2-7 
difference between mental and, 
253 
Neurasthenia, 1, 28 
meaning, 5 
treatment, 5 
cases of, 6 
Neurosis, 26, 29, 31, 36, 37, 296, 
328, 329, 334. 
as form of adjustment, 35-40 
compulsion neurosis, 43 
distinguished from psychosis, 

27, 44 
sex in, 29 
Neurotics, 25-27, 35, 44, 79, 295 
"Noopsyche," relation to "thymo- 

psyche," 178 
Nonsense wit, 122 

Object love, 189, 190 

insane artistic productions, 
310-312 
CEdipus dreams, 214-217 
"CEdipus Rex," 214 
Oldest child, relation to only 

child, 288, 289 
Only child, 279-295, 296 

aggressive qualities of, 288, 

289 
as leader, 289, 327 
crown prince, origin of insti- 
tution, 279, 280 
dependent on parent's influ- 
ence, 283 
fixation on parent's image, 281- 

284, 293, 294 m < 
oldest son, position in home, 
279, 280 



342 



INDEX 



Only child (continued), 
present economic system and, 

295 
prophylaxis and, 294, 295 
relation to environment, 279, 

296 
sleeping with parents and, 291 
transference of, 286-288 

Organic forgetfulness, 50 

Outdoing wit, 124, 125 



Pan, 102 

Paradise, conception of, 209 
Paranoia, 264-278 
relation to "normal" person, 

278 
Paranoiac, parts of history, 270- 

277 
Pater, 310 
Pearson, 219 
Peary, 149 
Peeper, 128 
Penn, William, 289 
Perversion, meaning, 128 
Pestalozzi, 289 
Pets, as emotional outlet, 239, 

240 
Phallic symbols, 66 
Phillips, Wendell, 132, 133 
Pinel, Philippe, 2 
Playing with dolls, influence of, 

292 
Pleasure principle, 159, 314 
Poet, relation to liar, 207 
"Poison needle" case, 192, 193 
Poriomania, 54 
Prepubescent age, 106, 189, 190, 

281 
Prescott, 207 

Productions, artistic, 308, 312 
Projection, 45 
"Prophetic" dreams, significance, 

143, 144, 227-229 
Prophylaxis,. 

only child and, 294, 295 
psychoanalysis and, 21, 46 
Prostitution complex, 45 
Prostitution fancies, 194 
"Pseudologia phantastica," 205 



Psychoanalysis, 
as prophylaxis, 21, 46 
differences between hypnotism 

and, 18 
limitations of, 46 
meaning, 1 

relation to defective, 19 
similarity to sculpture, 18, 19 
Psychology, 
of actor, soldier, life-saver, etc., 

321-323 
of changing names, 86-88 
of chronic engagements, 223 
of collections, 102- no, 336 
of crown prince institution, 279- 

280,288 
of fear of burglars, 101, 102, 185, 

186 
of forgetting, 49-59, 68-75 
of forgetting names, 76-86 
of fortune-teller, 298 
of lapses in reading, writing, 

etc., 88-97 
of losing, 99-101 
of lying, 200-208 
of marriage among bachelors, 

286 
of mother-in-law, 2&2, 283 
of playing with dolls, 292 
of rivalry between father and 

son, 214, 317 
of smutty joke, 126-131, 133-136 
of sneezing, 144 
of vacations, 328, 329 
of wit, 1 13-138 
Psychopathological actions, 1, 

47, 49 5i, 335 
Psychopathology of everyday 

life, changing names, 86-88 
collections, 102-110 
forgetting names, 76-86 
lapses in reading, writing, etc., 

88-97 
losing, 99-101 
significance of, 24, 110-112 
Psychosis, 29, 37-39, ^77, 278, 

296, 32S, 334 
distinguished from neurosis, 

27, 44 
form of adjustment, 35-40 



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